Today is Gwendolyn’s first birthday. She’s still a tiny thing, not 20 pounds yet, and still fits easily in her 6 month onesies. Before she was born she decided to do everything in her own way, in her own time and she has kept with the theme. I have promised her birth story for a whole year, and it will be published on MONDAY. Cross my heart. In honor of her birthday, here are some special things about Gwen, including lots of nicknames. Stay tuned for the last one. It’s the best.
1. Talking to Baby Gwen: Gwendolyn loves learning baby signs and seems to pick up a new one every day or two. She won’t say much voluntarily, but every now and then she lets a word slip out. We’ve been fans of Baby Signing Time for a long time and Gwendolyn loves to watch them and try to imitate the signs. Our discs wore out a long time ago, so we are stuck renting them from Amazon for now. They are week long rentals, though, so I’m just renting a different one every week. It’s a small price to pay for how much she likes it and how it makes communication so much easier. She even does the sign for “baby” when she wants to watch the show, which is great unless it is 3am.
The trouble is that she has blended some signs and it is hard to tell them apart. “More,” “Cracker,” “Owie,” and “Shoe” all look pretty much the same. We’re working on those. Lest you worry about her speech, we always say the word when we use the sign, or when she signs to us.
2. The birthday “Celebration:” We kind of suck at celebrations at our house right now. But that is a post for another day. Gwendolyn’s birthday celebration happened the night before her birthday with only half the family present and I ran out and bought the cake while dinner was cooking. Nevertheless, she liked the cake, but not until she had played with it a bit. Yay, Costco for last minute cakes! Also, Thursday nights may, in fact, be the magic time to go to Costco. No line for gas, no line for the cashier!
For her gift, we gave her a little riding ladybug. I love this one because it is on casters and is easy to turn. I didn’t manage to get it wrapped (see above statement on celebrations) but she didn’t care and immediately began to play with it, pushing it all over the kitchen.
3. Gwendolyn’s Favorite Things #1 Books: I’ve never had a kid go so nutty for books this young. She just can’t get enough of them and wants anyone to read them over and over again. She loves “Goodnight Moon,” and any book showing animals. but she will also try to get you to read anything with pages to her.
4. Gwennie’s favorite thing #2 Being an Aunty: Our grandson Elliot (and his mommy) live with us, so Gwendolyn gets to spend lots of time with her nephew. He is three and a half months younger than her and finally starting to fight back. They both get excited to see each other when one has been gone for a while. First thing in the morning sometimes, Gwen will hear Elliot playing in his room and go and pound on the door to try to get to him. You can catch the antic of Gwen and Elliot together under #babyaunty on instagram. (When I remember to use the hastag.)
5. Winnie’s Favorite thing #3 Pacifiers: Or maybe they are my favorite thing, I’m not sure. We both love them and she often has one in her mouth and one in her hand. But if you offer her a bite or a drink, she doesn’t spit out the pacifier, she just opens her mouth and lets it fall out. it’s kind of cute.
Once she starts talking, the pacifier will mostly live in bed and in the car seat. We don’t allow talking with a paci.
6. Woowoo’s favorite thing #4 Going outside: She loves going swimming or sitting on her big brother’s tricycle and being pulled along. She made up her own signs for both things and uses them often. “Swimming” is like two hands splashing, and “Bike” is one finger held up and moved in a circle.
7. Gwendolyn Rose of the Desert: Gwennie is the only one of our kids to have her own original song. If you watch, you’ll see Molly cover her ears at one point of the song. The lyrics talk about not having any brothers or sisters and Molly was just so upset at that prospect, she just wouldn’t have anything to do with it. The song was written mostly by Jay, but the kids helped too.
Go to This Ain’t the Lyceum for more Quick Takes!
How adorable! Does she eat the paper page books? Or actually look through them alone? Our kids have all loved books but loved destroying them more at that age. 🙂
She’s still eating them sometimes. I try to keep plenty of board books around, but even then she just wrecked a library board book. You win some, you lose some, right?
How sweet is this post!! Looks like a beautiful celebration.