Larkin's First Birthday Portraits | St. Louis Baby Photographer

Dear Larkin Clementine, 

Your smile alone can light up anyone's day. The way you move with determination and persistence, the delight you take in each member of your family, including the kitty... Your laugh, your greeny-gray-brown eyes, your curly light brown hair... Every speck of you: you are pure joy. Thank you for choosing our family. We are forever changed by you. Here's to your next year-- may it be even more magical than your first. 

Love, 

Mama

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And because it's overdue, and will complete Larkin's year of milestone reports, here is Larkin right now:

1. Larkin is not yet walking. She cruises with utter one-handed confidence, and is a beast when it comes to climbing up and down from medium obstacles. Luckily she isn't attempting the crazy stuff yet-- dining room chairs and tables (looking at you, Bree and Knox!!), kitchen drawers, top of the piano, etc. but she is really comfortable with stairs (still under total observation) and the couch, etc. 

2. And as of today, she is beginning to try to stand without holding onto things, and she went from sitting to standing without using help, so I feel like just today she has turned a corner towards walking. 

3. She loves to help play the piano, and she sometimes seems like she is singing. In fact, one of her "words" is "la la la", very exaggerated with the tongue and everything. 

4. She LOVES listening to music and she will sit and dance with her hands in the air. She still responds to the "Trolls" soundtrack faster than anything else. 

5. She LOVES soft stuffed animals. So her one birthday gift from us was a soft plush monster than makes noise when you poke his belly. She was so charmed by it! And a few of her aunties/friends gave her other soft stuffies at her birthday party, and she absolutely loves to pull them out of the bin and hug them. It's so sweet! Today at church, she pulled an unused disposable diaper out of my bag and she hugged THAT, so I guess she's not discerning... just as long as it's soft and squishy. Haha!

6. After a small period of time a few weeks ago where she was working on breaking her top two teeth through and therefore waking at least once a night, she is back to sleeping all night for the most part. She's adopted her bottle as a soother when she sleeps, so we've worked it out where we sneak the milk bottle away and replace it with a bottle of water to keep her little teeth healthy. 

7. Which means yes-- she has her two top teeth now, and they're about halfway in. That's four teeth total, so I know we're overdue for more teeth soon. 

8. Her hair is long enough for a top-of-the-head ponytail, or for a bow-on-a-barrette. The headband era is done for now--- she pulls them off too readily (go peek again at the bubble bath photos and you'll see one where she's beginning to tug her headband off). SADNESS! 

9. She LOVES to open cupboards and pull things out. She's especially fascinated with a dish scrubber and a sponge I keep under the sink. I mean, she can mess with those two things for a long time before moving over to the cupboard with the water bottles in it. I'm constantly putting all those things back. 

10. She is probably en route to one nap. Some days she sleeps in til 8:30, so on those days I just keep her up til after I take Quinn to preschool at 12:30, and then nap her from 12:45-3:45. On the days she wakes with the rest of us at 7, I try a morning nap for her at 9:30 and a second nap for her around 2:30, and sometimes it works, and sometimes she sleeps great for the first one and jabbers the whole time for her second one. *shrug* I am just having to remain flexible every day when it comes to napping. 

11. She LOVES playgrounds. Slides are her favorite, and she loves to go down on her tummy, feet first, arms outstretched toward the top. She grins so wide when she slides! She loves the swing, too, and climbing the structures' stairs and scaring me to death every time she goes to one of those long-drop openings. Come on moms, you KNOW what I mean. SCARY! She thinks she can get down from them like she does a short step. Only it's a 10 foot drop, so.... 

12. She is SO chatty, and it's the cutest thing EVER. I can't even describe it, but she just chatters and "talks" and it sounds so cheerful and mellow and conversational. It's my favorite! 

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Thank you, friends, for indulging me over a WHOLE year, where the majority of my blog posts have been Larkin-centric. I hope, as she gets more independent and I find more pockets of time, to blog more and more... and there's a good chance that I'll have more variety in topics. But for now, you're stuck enjoying Larkin Larkin Larkin. ♥ And that's not really a bad thing.