Summer fun

It's warm enough for the kids to play in their kiddy pool, so I guess summer is officially here! Teagan had her first experience "swimming" when we went over to play with her cousins this afternoon. She was sort of interested in being in the little pool until her big cousin Connor came down the slide pretty fast. After that, she was more interested in playing with balls outside of the pool.

Problem solved!

So I know this has happened to all women. You go into a public restroom stall and there is no hook for your purse. What do you do? Well, Teagan has the perfect solution!

Walking!

Teagan has been taking steps independently for a few weeks now, but we never seem to get it on camera. Today I was finally able to record her cute little toddle. She walks more and more each day and really seems to have a lot of confidence in herself. If she is standing and she wants to go somewhere, she will usually take off walking first before crawling. She also still loves walking with her push toys.

The package says non-toxic...

Teagan loves to imitate writing whenever she finds a pen. She crawls around with the pen searching for some paper to "write" on. Since she likes to do that so much, I got her a Magna Doodle. That has become her favorite car toy right now. When we were at Target today, I decided to go ahead and get her some crayons. As I was getting lunch ready today, I put her in her chair with some paper and the crayons. She did great at first and seemed to get the hang of scribbling pretty fast. After a few minutes though, she decided to go ahead and taste the blue crayon. Soon she had blue crayon on her tongue and her teeth. She was pretty cooperative with letting me use a wash cloth to clean off her teeth and tongue.

Last night at dinner Paul and I were very impressed when Teagan decided to use her fork to eat her meatloaf and peas. She did an amazingly good job of stabbing the meatloaf and used her fingers to put the peas on her fork before putting it in her mouth. Today at lunch she also decided to use her fork to eat peaches. Is she the smartest baby or what?

And for the walking progress update... She is really taking off! She will pretty readily attempt to walk short distances and has surprised us with some of the longer distances that she has walked independently. She loves to walk around the house while I hold her hands. Anytime I say "You want to walk to the potty, your room, etc..", she always answers "ya!"

Cuddly fabric

Well, I still love to sew for Teagan every chance I get, and Teagan has really taken an interest in the fabric. She loves to help open the box whenever new fabric arrives in the mail. As soon as she can get her hands on it, she scoops it up and cuddles it like a blankie, or tries to lay down on it on the floor. She really liked this pink chickadee bamboo fabric that I used to make her latest, cutest diaper!

The things I let her do....

When I am desperate to keep a baby entertained or happy, it sometimes surprises me the things that I will let Teagan do! Like today, on the way home from an errand, she was not happy to be in her carseat. So I handed her a travel pack of kleenex and she happily pulled all the tissue out one by one all the way home. Now what to do with all the loose tissue? Also today, while I was putting dinner in the crock pot, she opened a brand new box of ziploc bags and pulled them all out. I knew she was doing it, but it was keeping her busy, so I just let her keep at it. And sometimes I think I must be crazy to let her feed herself yogurt almost every day. It is so messy, but she loves it, and occasionally it actually buys me a few minutes to empty the dishwasher while she is still eating. Will I ever get tired of taking pics of her in her seat covered in food? Check out those messy yogurt coverd hands! I even had to wash yogurt out of her eyelashes tonight.

Photo shoot

1 year stats

Teagan had her 1 year old well check today, which she did NOT enjoy! She started crying when I had to lay her down to measure her length and never really fully recovered from that trauma, even though I held her for the rest of the visit. She is now 30 1/4" long (80th percentile) and 22 lbs 1 oz (70th percentile).

Teagan tasted watermelon for the first time at a picnic yesterday and seemed to really like it, so I decided to get a watermelon while we were at the store this afternoon. As soon as she saw the display with all the watermelons she started saying "ball, ball, ball" very excitedly. She always likes to help me unload the grocery bags when we get home, but was quite frustrated with how heavy that new "ball" we got was. After I got it out of the bag she did actually manage to pick it up a little off the ground, and then she tried to roll it.

Happy Birthday Teagan!

I can't believe how fast Teagan's first year has went by! Teagan had a full day today. She played with her new toys, we went to lunch with Paul, took a good nap, and then we all played outside this afternoon when Paul came home from work a little early. After dinner, we went to Target and told her she could pick out whatever she wanted. Or something like that. Our shopping cart was soon filled with 2 giant balls, 1 medium size ball, a small soccer ball, and a container of bubbles. She is so into balls right now and was quite disappointed that we weren't taking home all of the balls in a big display.

We gave Teagan a push cart with blocks and a toddler push Radio Flyer wagon. She really took off with both of those toys today and is walking really well while pushing them. She was really having fun doing laps around the living room! She also took 4 steps to walk to Paul twice tonight. She really does a great job walking to her Daddy. I think she know that Mommy will just come to her.

Birthday Party

Teagan had her first birthday party today. I think she did pretty well considering that she tends to get overwhelmed with groups of people. She really liked all the toys. I'm sure she'll have a fun day playing with everything tomorrow. I think she had fun making a mess with her cake, but I'm not sure how much she actually ate! She looked a little disappointed when we blew out her candle.