The Bird and The Bean: Eden Amelia is ONE YEAR OLD!!!

Eden turned ONE today! This year has been full of hardships, growing pains, sleepless nights (and days), blood, sweat, and tears but it has also been full of rewards, smiles, laughter, joy, triumphs, milestones, happiness, growth, and love; so much love.

I can hardly wrap my mind around the fact that it's been one whole year since Eden joined our lives (outside of the womb, of course). One year. Twelve months. Fifty two weeks. Three hundred and sixty five days. Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours. You get the point. It seems like a long time and yet so brief. It flew by but is also filled with so many memories. Over the past few days and weeks, I have been doing a lot of reminiscing about my pregnancy and the days leading up to Eden's birth. I like to remember what I was doing "this time last year." As I start writing this blog post, it is 1:25 in the morning (if I finish it in one sitting, it will be a miracle) (I didn't). This time last year, I was trying to rest but having pretty regular contractions. I think I had started to time them with an app on my phone. I had no idea what the next several hours would hold and I was just taking it one contraction at a time. I won't tell you my whole birth story again because I already wrote a very long blog post with all the details. If you'd like to read it, you can find it here. The point is that I had Eden naturally, without any medications or an epidural and it was the easiest part of motherhood thus far! Haha! We got off to a pretty rough start. Adjusting to such an immense change was difficult for me. Breastfeeding was probably the hardest thing I've ever succeeded at in my entire life. But once again, I already wrote a blog post (actually two) about that. You can read them here and here. Working part-time and being a mom is no cake walk (my hubby definitely has it worse then me, though). Because of her zest for life, Eden is not a big fan of sleep. It's still quite challenging to get her to go to sleep and stay asleep. She is beginning to exert her will and throw little mini tantrums when she is told she cannot do something or is removed from playing with something off-limits (e.g. the toilet).

But all of it is so totally worth it. It sounds kind of cliche to me because everyone always says it but it's only because it's true! I can look back and see the positive things that have come out of these challenging situations. Her stubborn-ness and hatred for sleep are qualities that will serve her very well as an adult. I just pray for the patience and grace to grow and cultivate her strengths and weaknesses so that she can be the woman God has created her to be.

And the positives. Oh, the positives. What a joy this child is! She never meets a stranger. She's so friendly and outgoing (not that the opposite is bad…I just enjoy her reaction when we're around other people). I mean, you can see for yourself that she's just stinking adorable! LOL.

I am amazed at how rapidly she is developing. I feel like her language could explode any day now. She clearly says "Mama" and "Dada," of course, but we also think she says "kitty." On a few occasions, she's said other things like "bye." She can sign "all done" but doesn't always do it at the appropriate time. Haha. She will also sign "more" with some prompting. She waves "bye" with some coaxing. She has started making what we call the "scrunch face." It is just about the cutest thing you have ever seen. No, maybe not as cute as giving me kisses when I ask for them. I don't know. It's a toss up!

She's not super graceful and I don't think she'll be walking anytime real soon but she gets around just fine. She crawls at super fast speeds and pulls up on everything. She has acquired her fair share of "boo-boo's" already. She loves to explore and she really enjoys playing with doors right now. She loves music and dances in the cutest little way. She plays with the instruments we got her for Christmas quite frequently and really loves her interactive musical toys, as well.

This girl loves to eat and she can put away some grub! She has 8 teeth now, 4 on top and 4 on bottom! Thankfully, her favorite foods right now are meat, beans, fruits and vegetables. She loves enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas, chili, spaghetti, chicken lo mien, chicken noodle soup, etc. She also still loves her apples and clementines. She has a newfound love for raisins, as well.

I will have her official weight, length and head circumference when we go to the doctor for her 12 month check-up tomorrow, but I don't want to delay posting until then so I'll have to come back and edit once I have that information! Last time I weighed her on our scales at home, she was about 22 1/2 pounds! She's a chunk, that's for sure.

*EDIT* She weighed 22 lbs 9 oz and was 29 1/4 in long at her doctor's appointment on Tuesday. That's the 75th and 50th percentiles respectively. Her head is 19 1/4 in. in circumference and that's >95%, as usual.

She's still in size 3 diapers but I think I may go up to 4's after we're finished with all the 3's we have. She's definitely in 12 month clothes and may even have to go to some 18 month stuff soon!

Her birthday party is on Saturday but we celebrated today with a few activities. Daddy got off work for a snow day since there's still quite a bit of snow and ice on the back roads in Bedford Co. No complaints out of us! Nanny and Poppy came to hang out for a few hours, too! We had birthday waffles for breakfast, took a nap, met a few friends at Chick-Fil-A for a late lunch, played at Kids' Cove, and came home and had dinner and cupcakes with some friends over. It was a very good day! Enjoy some pics!