Jilly Bean is 1 year old!

It's official! Our little girl is one year old now!! It's hard to believe she's been with us for a year, but it's been an awesome year. Here are some of her latest accomplishments:

*She can now crawl on her hands and knees. Only took her about 3 months of "crawling" to figure out the knees. She was doing fine with her army-style crawling, but now has learned she's faster on her hands and knees.

*She LOVES to stand up on anything she can. This pretty much means anything she can touch, regardless of how stable it really is. She used all these items, to varying degress of success: couches, entertaiment cabinet, rocking chair, Mama's legs, an empty box, ExerSaucer, stuffed animals, walls, doors, piano stool, etc. She will cruise around the room too, on anything she can touch.

*She now says Mama and Dada fairly often. Dada was, of course, first, then Mama awhile later. For a little bit, she would say Dada when excited and Mama when upset. Lately though, I've just noticed her saying one or the other during a day, then switching the next day.

*Jilly loves to eat food, as long as she can control it. She wants to eat off Daddy's plate all the time, and gets mad when he refuses to share. She wants to pick up everything with her own hands and has little patience for baby food.

Funny story from last night. Steve and I were eating ice cream, when Jilly decided she no longer wanted to be in bed. Steve brought her out to the family room, where she promptly tried to scam some ice cream off him. His bowl was empty and tried to warn her she wouldn't like it anyway. She was persistant, so he told her to go ask Mama for some. She right away, leaves him, crawls over to me on the couch, pulls herself up, and says, "Mama!" Hilarious! I'm laughing about it and decide that I might as well give her a taste. So I put a bit on the spoon and put it in her mouth. The look she made was to die for! It looked as though I had fed her arsenic soaked brussel sprouts! I see this enormous frown and it, again, cracks me up. I'm laughing hysterically, and loudly I might add, and it did NOT please the little girl. She freaked out and started crying angrily at me. She took a long time to be consoled, and it didn't help that I just laughed harder. Today, she was being a little snotty, so I told her that she needed to shape up or else she'd get ice cream for lunch. That should give you a good idea of our parenting strategy. I mean, who does that?

Anyway, that's just a little update about the kiddo. I will be sending out Christmas letters soon, I promise! :-)