Ruby 1.0

Happy Birthday, Ruby!!! 

Ryan and I are still trying to figure out how this teeny tiny baby in teeny tiny diapers that were still too big

Turned into this excited little girl in a "big girl" high chair overnight.

I can't believe how quickly time has gone by this year and how  my sweet, tiny baby has evolved into this amazing, talkative, busy, happy, inquisitive, wonderful little girl with wild blue eyes and even wilder curly hair (Monkey Jammies courtesy of Nona). 

Ruby had a wonderful 1st birthday. We postponed a big celebration on the day of to be with more of the family up in Colorado at a later date. Instead I took the day off work to hang out with her and we opened presents with Ryan when he came home from work.

Daddy was a very good sport and dressed appropriately for the party :)

He helped to model cute outfits and explain to Ruby the finer points of crushed velvet couture sweat suits. 

We opened boxes sent with love.....

and took very careful measures with the scissors....

We learned how to dial our new Telephone...

and immediately learned how to torment Diesel with it....

 

We played with our new game, Peek a Shoe, which is a game with a very enthusiastic Octopus in Sneakers who swallows little plastic balls then hides them under his shoes for Ruby to find. 

 Ruby had her 12 month check up and shots that morning, so presents and the cupcakes that were supposed to follow were cut short by a desperate need for bedtime after such a long day.  This left Dad playing "Peek-a-Shoe" all by himself....

At our 12 month check up the doctor said that Ruby is such a smart, social, fun little person.  Ruby is now 24 pounds, 30.5" tall, and in the 75th percentile for both. She talked in the doctors office the entire time, excitedly showed off her shoes to the nurses, and called the Giraffe on the wall a "dog" over and over again.  They gave her credit for it anyway. :) Shots are never any fun, but Ruby got her first Lollipop afterwards and gave the nurse a big smile and a "yum" as a peace offering when it was all said and done.

Our darling daughter is VERY talkative. She says many things with a very sure, assertive tone even though we're not quite sure what the words are yet.  She does say and know 'dog', 'ball', 'Dees' ( for Diesel), 'mama', 'dada', 'yum', and what i think is "that"....  but the jury is still out on that one. 

Ruby's favorite past time lately is looking at pictures.  She loves to walk around the house and look at all of the pictures of family and friends that we have in frames.  She'll point me to go all over the house to look at pictures.  Her favorite "book" to "read" is the calendar Uncle Kenny made us for Christmas last year with the pictures of every one's animals.  She will crawl to the kitchen where the calendar hangs, point to it on the wall and say "dog" until I get it down for her.  She'll sit in my lap and we will "read' the months and talk about the dogs and cats over and over.  Bella, Abby, Riley and Mobey and Blue and Violet's pages make her smile the most.  She's not quite sure what the cats are, she sort of flips past them to get to the dogs.  She likes dogs. :) 

   Here's a little collection of some of my favorite pictures of our baby over the last year.  There are literally hundreds, and this post took me hours to write because i got so lost in the magic of just how much a littler person can change in the course of 12 months. 

We've learned that Blog Season and Wedding Season don't work so well together.  We had our last busy wedding day of the year today so I'm hoping that the blog post will again be more frequent - especially now that we're on the brink of walking and talking and so many more exciting changes! 

Love, Kelli