The Little Things: Our Siri Girl is One!

Wow. We've spent the last couple of days remembering last year at this time so vividly--the final days of preparing and waiting for Siri's arrival, the wonderful morning it became clear we were going to meet her, and her amazing birth.

She is, as I've said many times before, a delightful little girl. She is growing more assertive, and is quick to let us all know when we've not met up to her expectations. She is always been quite independent, but now her mobility allows this to take her to all corners to explore on her own. I often find her at the dollhouse where she loves to find the babies to hold, or at the kitchen where she sorts foods. Siri is loving organizing, she sorts pretty much everything she can get her hands on. She is getting quite steady on her feet, and we anticipate that she'll be walking on soon, but for now she seems content to crawl or dive at what she wants.

Her verbal skills are picking up, she's got quite definite sounds for dad (da-da), mom (ma-ma), nursing (na-na), cheese--as in smile for the camera (cheese!), dog/duck--you just have to know the context (daaahhh!!!), ball (ba) and she is always working on animal sounds for elephants, monkeys, and sheep. She loves to sing, and play the piano, and clap. She thinks its hysterical to rub food in her hair, and her face lights up whenever Annie comes to play with her.

We had a fun day celebrating her birthday, especially enjoying that it was a weekend so that Eric could spend the day with us. We opened presents before breakfast, Annie was quite eager to help and demonstrate for Siri all the possibilities for fun. We had pancakes for breakfast, went to church, Skyped with my brother and his family--including our cute new nephew Lennart--and my parents in Finland, took a walk around the block in her new wagon, and had lunch all together. After nap time, the girls had fun playing with new toys and watching the rain.