A year in review



Today is Kara's first birthday!

In all honesty, it's been the most physically and emotionally stressful, challenging and full-on exhausting year of my life. As little as a half-year ago, all I could think about was getting to this milestone in Kara's existence. I didn't start to feel like I was achieving some tiny semblance of my own life until Kara was 15 weeks old.

From there, it wasn't until Kara was about 8 months old that I felt like I could count on my day-to-day life to be consistently good. It's only been a little more than a month since anybody in this household could count on getting more than 5 hours of sleep at a stretch. I still don't feel like my brain has fully recovered from the beating it took for those 11 months — my memory is still shot, most of the time.

So, while I would have liked to have had a sibling for Kara, I still don't feel that I'll be capable of forgetting the "bad times" enough to be able to have more children.

All that said: Kara is still the most delightful person I've ever had in my life. It really is a joy to be with her daily. Having a child is the most dichotomous thing I can imagine anyone experiencing.

Super-cool milestone(s) update

On Saturday morning, Kara came with me up to our bedroom for her morning feeding and waved at me following it. I greeted her with a, "Hello,", which was met with a, "Halla,". Kara spoke her first word!

The next morning, she addressed her daddy, "Dada,", which beats the, "A-da," she was calling him for months. At dinner yesterday, she mimicked my, "All done," by saying, "Alda".

Kara has been signing the words "Milk," and "More," for weeks now, so I didn't think much of it when she signed "More," on Sunday morning. Still, I started singing and signing, "The More We Get Together". This was met with her signing, "More," "Together," and "Happier" along with me! She also signed "All done" during the dinnertime in which she spoke that phrase (which Caty pointed out, she probably thinks is one word).

So, we've had something of a flurry of communication around here for the past few days!

Kara's not walking yet, but happily uses the dining chairs as walkers. She doesn't stand unassisted unless she isn't paying attention — she's strong enough and has the balance to do so, but isn't confident enough to try it. For now, she's still zipping along by crawling her odd one-knee-up-in-the-air crawl, which she's gotten adept at and greatly enjoys doing.

*Credits to Caty for the photo*