1 year old!!

Mi reinita adorada
Ya vas a cumplir un año y no lo puedo creer. Como voló este año pero que maravilloso ha sido. Verte como cambias cada día y como vas aprendiendo más del mundo ha sido increible. Tambien verte como te vuelves una personita más independiente, aunque de cierto modo a mi me pone un poquito triste ver lo rápido que creces es también algo maravilloso. A ratos quiero que dejes de crecer, que el tiempo pare, en parte tengo miedo de que en un abrir y cerrar de ojos vas ha estar lista a irte a la universidad, casandote y viviendo lo que yo estoy viviendo ahora. Ojala pueda ser la mamá que tu abuela fue para mí y que tu bisabuela fue para tu abuela para que crezcas feliz, segura y llena de amor. Te prometo que hago todo lo que está en mis manos para que así sea.
Well now we will switch to english to recount these past 3 months.
You are a master crawler and can do it really fast, you can definetely beat me when it comes to crawling especially if it is over tile. It really hurts mommy on her knees and I was a bit worried if it will hurt you, but I learned that babies do not have knee caps, or if they do they are soft and that is why it is so easy for you to just crawl away even on the tile. Isn't it amazing how perfect the human body is!
During the past 3 months you definitely perfected your crawling, standing and cruising abilities, you also learned to climb. You can now climb up the stairs and you love to climb on the little rocking chair Aunt Eddie Mae gave you. It is really cute to see you climbing over it but a bit scary when you decide to stand up on it and rock, so daddy and I decided to make the chair available only when we are around; you want to climb over everything that seems climbable to you. You have also mastered the skill of getting off your Bumbo Chair, so we can't use it much any more since you don't really enjoy sitting on it and can get off pretty quick.

You are eating almost everything now. I have still kept you away from red meat, and the foods that you are not supposed to try yet (peanuts, shellfish, candy, fresh berries) but besides that you have liked almost everything. Mommy was a bit paranoid about you chocking so I was a bit slow introducing you to chunky food. Since I really worked on pureeing your food you didn't like chunky stuff at the beginning and will gag to anything that was not finely pureed. Thanks God some persistence paid off and now you can eat some soft chunky stuff. You can master cheerios and you enjoy pear chunks, chicken chunks, sweet potato fries, mango chunks, avocado, egg yolks, etc. I still puree a lot of your food but I am trying to introduce mostly normal food to you.
It will be 1year in a few days from the day that you were born and I am happy to announce that we made it!!!! Next Tuesday you will have nursed for a complete year and guess what I am not ready to give it up yet!! and I hope you don't want to give it up either. I stopped pumping at work a few weeks ago since you will not be drinking milk during the day after we are done with the milk I have frozen; but I want to keep nursing when I am at home (morning, night, to go to bed, on the weekends, the days I don't have to go to the office, etc). I have to thank you though because you were such a good sport on the nursing field. You never gave me any problems and always liked mommy's milk. Thanks so much because it has been such an amazing experience to be a long term nursing mom. I hope that I was and will be able to give you all sorts of good stuff through my milk.
At the end of April we went to Birmingham to visit Granny J and Grandpa Mackey and for Uncle Bill's trip to heaven ceremony. He was daddy's great uncle but more of grandfather to him and a great grandfather to you. The few days he spent with you over Thanksgiving he was so happy and excited to see you and hold you, he was such great person and will be missed. Rest in peace Uncle Bill.
You took another trip to Ecuador a few weeks ago. We went to visit mommy's family and friends and we had such a great time. Every morning we'll go visit Papapa (your great-grandfather) and you loved playing with him, you learned to do so many things around him (blowing kisses, hand games, smiles, sounds, etc) for some reason some of the skills learned from Papapa have been forgotten but I hope you pick them up soon. We also went to Machachi (Grandma's Toto's farm) and it brought so many childhood memories back to mommy. I was so happy I was able to show you this beautiful place, you rode a horse and we spent a great day there; I hope that maybe next time we go to Ecuador we spent some more time in Machachi. We also celebrated your first birthday with a little party at Grandma's house. Your cousins, your mom's friend's kids, your great aunts and your great grandfather were all there. We played in the yard, had some contests for the older kids, had a piñata, blew the candles and had cake. I baked you from scratch carrot/apple cake with cream cheese frosting (Aunt Dani's recipe). You didn't seem to care much about it although you did take a few bites. You loved the animal crackers though. We are going to have another party for you here in Miami on the 14th along with your BFFs Sarah and Sadie who will be turning one this month too, and I will give it another try to the carrot cake.
You still wake up sometimes at night. Some days you go for longer stretches than others. Although I would really appreciate a full night sleep, I do like picking you up in the middle of night and just snuggling with you on the chair; sometimes I have fallen sleep and woken up hours later without knowing what I was doing in your room. In spite of the craziness it is wonderful and I am sure you will snooze through the night soon when you are ready. You love to sleep on your tummy with your butt up and surprisingly for you that seems very comfy.
Anyway, to say the least it has been a wonderful year. Thanks for being so great, Daddy and I love you so much and are so excited for many more fun years of fun with you.