She's one and fun!

My wonderful little Coralie is one!  Let me tell you a little about my wonderful girl.  We spend a lot of time on the deck "airplane spotting" for the airplanes that fly directly over us every ten minutes on the rare days that we are in the flight path.  Must be some wind direction issue.  Coralie LOVES it.  Now whenever she hears an airplane she freezes and listens and looks.  Every morning she tells me she wants to go outside.  Then, first thing, she sees my neighbor's antenna and tells me with her airplane sign language sign that it is an airplane.

Other signs she knows:
Dog
More
Water

Fish

Bird
Airplane
All done
Outside
Eat
Change (Diaper)
Bye Bye
Tree
Night Night
Hungry
Baby
Hat
Truck 

She steals my phone so she can push the button and see a photo of herself on the screen.  Makes her so happy no matter how many times she does it!

She loves to be the initiator of peek-a-boo.  Blankets, towels, doorways...

She loves to climb into and out of chairs...

And play in her little house...

She adores our neighbor, Cameron...

She loves swimming and putting her face in the water.  She is extremely affectionate with lots of hugs and kisses. She puts her hand to her mouth to blow you a kiss but doesn't understand the part where you blow the kiss across.  She just kisses herself and figures you get the idea.  She loves the bath, stairs, and slides.  She loves climbing in and out of and playing in her baby pool.  

She likes to play ball, go through the cabinets, play with musical button toys, and things that are not meant for babies. Like Legos.  She loves a good physical challenge.  Like climbing UP her baby slide or OVER her sandbox.  

She is very social and has a great sense of humor.  She loves to eat and enjoys her food with gusto.  That usually means lots of passionate "Mmmm!"s and at then end of the meal she is COVERED with food.  

She loves her new little car she got for her birthday.  She likes to get in, close the door, open the door, get out, close the door, open the door, get in, close the door...repeat repeat repeat.  Unfortunately, her other favorite thing lately is "walking" down stairs so that's kind of scary and keeps us on our toes.  

She loves the beach.  She gets there and is so happy she's practically bursting.  She will find some random kids, make friends with them, sit down next to them and hang out for hours.  She crawls right into the ocean with no fear.  The cold water never bothers her.  She loves to swim, crawl around, find rocks, and smoosh any castle someone tries to make.  She likes to sit on the boogie board and get pulled around.  She has very good balance, cracks herself up and laughs at any good "joke."  If you are standing near her with your legs slightly apart she will force her way through and crawl or walk between them.  

Her other favorite thing is BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS.  When any of the kids are watching her, I come back to find her snuggled up with them and they are reading to her :). It warms my heart now that they are all readers and can enjoy sharing that with her :).

Coralie is such a joy and we are all so lucky to have her in our lives.  She brings smiles and laughter to everyone.  Happy Birthday Coralie and thank you for joining our family!!!!!!  Congratulations on walking big girl!

The best part of waking up...

Living so far from one half of my family or the other prompted me to write blogs when my boys were small.  They each have a record of their baby days and lots of photos and videos that we can always look back on to have a good laugh.  As both of Coco's grandmothers have mentioned that they like to get up in the morning and have a little Coco with their coffee combined with feeling like I inundate Facebook with photos of her, as well as wanting her to have a digital baby book to look back at someday, I figured I'd better get on it and start recording this wonderful precious time on a blog.  So Grammie and Nana, this cup's for you :)

Coco was out partying all weekend for the 4th of July and has a bit of a cold so she was quite out of sorts for our visit to my friend's house yesterday but last night she slept 14 hours so I'd say that will help!  Today she is going to play with another friend's little girls while her sister and brothers are away so she won't be lonely.  I think today is the day to get her a baby pool too so she can splash away to her heart's content.  The neighbors had a small flat tupperware out for filling squirt guns and she crawled over and got into it so I think she's trying to tell me something ;)  She now has all 4 top teeth and two on the bottom, she's VERY close to getting the concept of signing, and she continues to work on taking more than one step :)  She's obsessed with climbing stairs but cannot be trusted to go down backwards as she tries to sit on the step with her back to the stairs and will fall over.  She squeezes her little body through the baby gate door while holding the gate open if it's not locked and she absolutely LOVES bubbles.  She's working on the mmmmm sound so soon I will have the pleasure of her calling me mama...and also the downside of being called constantly by another member of the family ;)  "Mom, moooommmmm?  Mommy?  Mommmmyyyy?  MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA!"  So that's the latest and here's a little Coco with your coffee.