1 Year Flies By

Ok the year in review.

Now that we're 1 we're off formula and onto milk. We're walking around like crazy. We're into everything. We love eating and trying new foods. We love sledding in the snow. And we love helping mom and dad do whatever they are doing!

We got rid of bottles as soon as she turned 1. We switched to sippy cups and never looked back. It was no big deal really. The only big deal has been constipation from the milk. So we've put N on Chia Seeds and Probiotics which has been super helpful and more natural than what the Dr. suggested, a chemical laxative.

We recently had a very good friend build us a helping tower. This is an awesome, kinda large, tower that N can stand on and be counter height to help in the kitchen! She loves to help wash the dishes and make pancakes for breakfast. And my new mom advice is LET THEM HELP. They want to help, they want to do what you're doing and when they play they mirror your actions anyway, so let them do it! N loves to make pancakes, she mixes up the mix for us and tastes the first ones off the griddle to make sure they're up to snuff. She also loves making pizza and rolling out the dough (and getting flour everywhere).

N's Helper Tower!

Making Cookies

Rolling out the pizza dough!

That brings me to my next top tip: DON'T BE AFRAID TO GET MESSY. Its kind of a pain, I know, to have to deal with the clean up, but that's something they can help with too, after all that's part of the process! As an artist, I'm constantly making a mess, I mean, it's the nature of my work! I've never painted without getting paint in places that I didn't want it. And I think its really liberating for one to just make a terrible mess! N loves to paint with momma, draw in my studio, or make a mess making pizza with the flour and dough. Either way she's learning and exploring and letting loose! We try to have N help with clean up too. Once we clean her up of course.

Which brings me to my third tip: Chores. Again let them help. We have a dog (as you may know from my previous post about dogs before kids) And N's first chore is feeding him. She LOVES to feed him and in the beginning, well, she kinda was terrible at it and got the food everywhere (let them get messy and make a mess right?) and she couldn't scoop it and she couldn't aim the scoop, but now that we've been doing it for about 10 months, she's gotten so great at it. In fact the dog loves when she feeds him because she scoops way  more food out for him that my husband or I do. She's honed her fine motor skills with the scooping and the gross motor skills with getting the food and brining it over to the bowl.

So in recap, 1 year (the whole year) has been amazing, N's learned so much, and taught us so much. I leave you with this video of N doing her first chore!