Tara at 1yo

Today it is exactly one year ago that Tara joined us and popped out in the bath tub, in the hands of daddy :-) This year has flown by so fast. Somehow it seems like she was born yesterday, at the other hand it seems like she has always been with us, she is such an integral part of the family.

She is developing great. Not walking yet, but close, I don't think it will take long. She is taking some steps on her own, but not consistently We think the only word she is saying is 'dada' for bye-bye, although she might also say 'brrrrr' for pants (the Dutch word for that is 'broek') But we taught her baby signs and she has a good vocabulary of them, for example bird, dog, food, book, ball, nursing (an important one! :-) all gone, flower, doll, Tim, papa, mama, more, tooth brush, telephone, finished eating and tooth brush. The signing is great! She is able to communicate much more than Cees and Tim were at this age. She even sometimes combines 2 signs to a 'sentence'!

She loves tooth brushes and goes totally crazy when she sees one or when she sees some one brushing their teeth. She recognizes the word 'tooth brushing' and immediately follows the kid that is going to brush his teeth. She also has a sign for it, that she uses extensively.... We bought her her own tooth brush a while ago and she is very happy with it, but she is even more happy if she can take 4 or 5 tooth brushes in her arms and scoot around with them :-) She often goes into the bath room and uses the little step stool to get up to the sink and snatch all the tooth brushes she can get :-) :-) It is rather cute, although sometimes it drives us crazy to find tooth brushes all over the house and having to search for them before we are able to brush our teeth.

She can be a very happy baby, but she also has her days that she behaves more like Miss Grumpiness. But I think overall she is more happy than fussy.

We don't have a birthday party, we just make it a special day today, with presents divided over the whole day and a cake with one candle later today. Also we decorated the room, which really delighted Tara. So it is just a quiet family celebration. We let the boys choose a present for her yesterday, she is now the proud owner of a Duplo Primo boat and a very big box of Duplo dinosaurs and cavemen :-)

Next birthday in our house will be the birth of #4 next month!