Kate at 1 Year Old

Today is Kate's first birthday! She sure has grown a lot during this year! She is a very active, and spirited, little person, running around and always in the midst of things. If there is a fight somewhere, I will find Kate happily participating in it, screaming and hitting everybody around her... Nothing in the house is safe from her. She has figured out how to push chairs to where she needs to be higher up and make liberal use of that knowledge. It is quite hard to keep up with her, she seems to run from one challenging situation, into another! She sure keeps us on our toes.

We often find her on top of our dinner table. That has happened so many times, that I actually made up a special song, (tune of Santa Claus is coming to town)

You better watch out,
You better watch out,
You better sit down and
You better not come out,
Otherwise I'll put you
On your cute little butt.

The other kids LOVE this, since it contains the word 'butt' :-) And she likes the way I wiggle my finger with the You better watch out part, and actually has been joining in the finger waving. And at the moment, I just have to start singing it and she will go back to her chair by herself (for about 10 seconds, but still :-) Actually the last few days, she has decided that she will go back to a chair, but not necessarily her own, she will go to any other chair at the table and sit there, looking innocently :-)

Our weather finally is such that she can play outside. She is thoroughly enjoying that. During the morning, she keeps going to the door to our deck, trying to tell me that it is really time to open it now, even if it's still freezing outside.

I think she figures that she might be smaller than the rest, but she is nothing less, so she does her uttermost best to keep up with them and do exactly the same things they do. She has a pretty good relationship with most of her siblings, but is working through some issues with Jane. It seems that she and Jane are fighting the whole day. Both start it and both will immediately start hitting and screaming at the slightest infraction of the other. When Jane is playing somewhere, Kate will come over at her and start yelling at her. Or when Kate is walking somewhere, Jane will walk past her and push her... It is quite irritating and we can't wait for this phase to be over!

Kate has a serious shoe fetish. She always seems to be walking around with either her own or somebody's elses shoes. There are so many times that she will come over to me, carrying a large pair of boots, insisting that I put them on her feet and then she walks away clumsily and proudly in this much too large footwear!

She is much more verbal than the other kids were at this age. She is using quite some words already, like no, cheese, mama, papa, Jane, bye bye, book, Oh no! and hi. A few weeks ago, we were at our local museum, and at some point, she toddles over to a stranger and tells her 'Hi!'. Very cute and very social! She still does a lot of baby signs too, like squirrle, bird, water and more.

She has 7 teeth now, she got the last one a few weeks ago. She seems to be having an agreement with Timmy, that whenever he loses a teeth, she will add one to hers. They are trying to keep the total number of teeth in our household constant! She still sucks her thumb, it is easy to see when she is tired that way and it also help her to fall asleep at night. Still enthousiastically nursing too.