Juliette at One.

Wrote this at Christmastime but didn't get it posted until now. (So, basically, though our Christmas tree is mentioned, it is not still up this late in January haha)

Juliette is one year old.

I get this weird, sad sort of heart-tug in my chest when I have to put away one size of the kids' clothes to move them up to the next size. It is the close of a chapter, I guess, and a reminder that there is no going back. They will never fit those clothes again, they will never be that little again. I love every new stage, and I don't need or wish to go back. But the milestones are hard sometimes, aren't they?

I feel a little like that about our lovely Juliette turning one. It is marvelous. We adore her toothy grins and her joyful discovery of her own skills--crawling, climbing, standing. But the years are short now, aren't they? I am happy-sad that her one true "baby" year has closed, even as I revel in the fun and accomplishment of watching her second year unfold.

She is still squishy and lovely. She is still calm and inquisitive. She is growing a little more hair but she still has that delicious, inimitable baby scent. Sometimes when I open her door to check on her at night, her entire room smells like a warm, cozy baby. It melts me. I love Juliette at one.

She loves to climb the stairs. She is constantly attentive to the sounds of the baby gate, in case someone might accidentally leave it open. And when the opportunity presents itself, she power-crawls to the bottom step, making a little happy sound reserved for the thought, “I’m about to climb the stairs!!!!” Sometimes one of us catches her up in our arms and closes the gate, but sometimes she is so intent that we just let her go up (Mom or Dad close behind) and then carry her back down when she’s summited at the second floor.

She loves the Christmas tree. Many, many times every day she pops up on her knees, sweet chubby-cheeked face uplifted toward the lights and says, “Tee! Tee!”

She says a lot of words in her baby-way: tree (only for the Christmas tree), cracker, pickle, mama, dada, Gracie, Charlie, Cheerios, box, banana, stairs, thank you, up, amen, and (naturally) oh snap. She also signs a little: eat, milk, more, and a wonderfully maniacal arm flailing for “all done.” When she is tired or overstimulated by loving siblings, she crawls over to Steve or me to be picked up, and then waves bye-bye until we get the hint that she wants to go hang out in her crib and be alone, thankyouverymuch.

She is very pleased to eat Chex and Cheerios, graham crackers, sliced apples, bananas, squeeze pouches of fruits/veggies, Clementine oranges, cut-up peanut butter & honey sandwiches, and almost anything with marinara sauce on it. Mostly she rejects vegetables in their normal form, and she has recently developed a strong distaste for peaches. She is almost always hungry and spends a lot of time signing “eat” at us, especially when we go retrieve her from bed after naps or in the morning. Sometimes she refuses to smile or interact with us until we’ve fed her first. :)

At family prayer she pops up on her knees and clasps her little hands. She usually crawls off while we pray but contributes her “amen” when we finish.

Her favorite games are climbing over anyone sitting or laying on the floor, getting ticked by mama’s hair, and the “Juliette, Juliette, Juliette-ette-ette” game we play after diaper changes, where we kick her legs to the tune of… is it the William Tell Overture. Whenever I lay her down on her back she says “Ette ette ette!” and kicks her legs madly. I love it.

At bedtime she likes to read Sandra Boynton’s The Going to Bed Book. The other night she crawled up the stairs and into her room, right over to the chair where her book was. She reached it and sat down ready for her story. I put her on my lap and started to read, but she stood up and pulled towards the chair until I got us both settled up there to finish reading. We sing to her before bed, and she pulls her blanket up to her cheek and sucks her thumb. She loooooves her blanket. Sometimes in the night she rolls herself up in it like a fluffy burrito, or burrows underneath it until we can’t find her on the monitor. :)

She lets me kiss her cheeks and her chubby neck when I pick her up. I am soaking in her babyness, and enjoying every little moment of it. I love watching her learn and grow. I love seeing her raptly attentive to something new, discovering something beautiful, accomplishing something she has determined to do. It is going fast—maybe too fast—but I wouldn’t go backward, either. I love all the things that are Juliette right now.