Giuliana's ONE YEAR OLD update!

Our sweet little baby girl is ONE!
[Actually, she’s almost 14 months now - but I’m just really behind and decided to change the posting date of this blog post closer to her actual birthday versus today, 2/24/11.]

Giuliana is seriously the sweetest, prettiest little one year old baby girl on the planet! We just LOVE her to bits! She was my biggest baby at birth (8lbs 9oz), but was also my smallest in weight at one year. She might be tiny, but she’s full of personality and spunk!

Giuliana’s 1 year growth stats:
Height: 29.45 inches (75%ile)
Weight: 16lbs 6oz (5%ile)

Nicknames: “Giuls” (pronounced – Jewels), “Junana” (thanks to Rocco’s pronunciation of her full name), “Giuliana Bella Faith Martino so cute” (in part thanks to Rocco – this has become a family nickname for her!)

Tooth count: 6
She had 6 teeth on her first birthday and I think she’s currently working on two more.

Words: “Mama”, “Dada”, “Uh oh!”, “I know”, “Emmm” (for M&M’s), and just recently started saying “I luhhhh” when I say “I love you!” But honestly, this child does not talk much yet and I’m guessing it’s a combination of two things. She probably has a bit of speech delay from all her ear infections. The other reason being that she doesn’t really need to talk… her sister and brother talk so much and give her everything she wants, there is just not an urgency on her part yet.

Best Friends: Rocco & Gabby
Giuliana LOVES being with her big sister and brother! If they leave the room, she wants to leave the room and go exactly where they are. If they aren’t home, she sometimes enjoys the quiet time we get to share… but often times I think she is more fussy because she just misses them and the excitement they bring to her life.

Favorite book: “Open the Barn Door”
It’s a cute little board book with window that she gets to pull open. She LOVES when people read her this story. She smiles and giggles when she hears the animal sounds and now likes to be the one to open the window flap.

Nursing: Giuliana is still nursing. Once during the day before her morning nap, once before bedtime and then she’ll wake up 2-3 times during the night (more if sick!) to also nurse. I am in the process of starting to wean her because I am tired! I also think the biggest benefit to her right now is that I’m more like her human pacifier.

Sleep: Inconsistent. I blame this on still nursing her and having to mold her schedule around the big kid’s schedules. Lately, she’s going to bed around 8:30pm, waking up 2-3 times during the night to nurse, and then she wakes up for the day anywhere between 7:30-9am. Her bedtime and wake up time is always influenced by her day time naps. She still most often naps twice a day. But, in recent weeks she has only taken one nap during the day probably 4-6 times. So, I’m sure she’ll be on one nap a day come March.

Pets: None. But, she loves dogs and fish! We don’t have either… but whenever we are around a dog she screams and giggles with excitement and she loves it when they lick her. Yuck! She also loves looking in fish aquariums and gets very excited when she sees one.

Favorite toys: Gabby’s dress-up necklaces, baby dolls (she’ll hug and hold them so nice!), and her kitchen/bakery. She also LOVES playing in Gabby’s room with the small doll house. Gabby would tell you she doesn’t play with it… but that she destroys it. And, she is often spotted carrying around play bowls, plates, forks and spoons and pretends to stir things or try to feed you. She also loves to hang out in the kitchen pantry! She spends so much time pulling things off the shelf and hanging out in there that we refer to it as her favorite room in the house. We’ll put her little crackers, raisins and snacks on the shelf in there and she’ll be happily entertained for at least 10 minutes.

Favorite Foods: Eggs, Sausage, Mac-n-Cheese, hot dogs, blueberries, and M&M’s. She finally eats table foods like a champ and wants to eat anything and everything she sees everyone else eating. She loves mac-n-cheese, hot dogs, pizza, beans, avocado, rice, any kind of soup, salmon, mashed potatoes, steak, chicken, cereal… seriously, I don’t think there is anything she doesn’t like! But, this child also has a serious sweet tooth! She LOVES ice cream, M&M’s, and any kind of chocolate for that matter. And, she knows exactly where the bowl of M&M’s is located in our kitchen and she’ll go over to that counter and point up at it and has no problem pointing and begging.

Walking: She started walking a few days before she turned 11 months. Now she is RUNNING!! And, climbing! She very much reminds us of Rocco in being an early walker and climber. She loves to run, and loves it more when we chase her. She’ll laugh so hard and we love this!

Problem solving: Currently prefers the “scream”, “bite” and “throw toys” methods
For a few months now, Giuliana has been acting like the top dog in the house. If one of the big kids is holding a toy that she wants, she’ll simply stand in front of them and scream at them until they give it to her. It was really pretty funny to watch! Then, she got brave and started just grabbing toys out of their hands. The big kids are great and often just give her the toys or laugh at her. Rocco will sometimes get upset, but mostly he just finds her amusing. In January, Giuls started the bad habit of biting us when she was upset or mad. For example, when I try to cut her nails, she’ll grab my hand holding hers and bite it. Or, if one of the kids takes a toy from her, she’ll grab their hand and bite it. Sometimes, if they try to help her and she doesn’t want help, she’ll bite them. Crazy girl! She also started throwing toys to make a point. I told her “no” one day, and she gave me an angry look, picked up a toy and whipped it at another toy. Then, just to make sure I understood she was mad, she looked back at me to make sure I was watching, picked the same toy up again and whipped it again! Wow – this girl is fiesty! I had to laugh! I imagine this will all smooth over once her vocabulary grows and she gets better at communicating with us.

Birthday Party wrap-up:
Giuliana shares the same birth day of her twin brothers. For Giuliana’s first birthday, I made a special chocolate cake for her to eat and destroy. I have done this for each of the kids, and I love seeing what they will do with their cakes. Usually, I have to make a second cake for us to actually eat but since we had Rocco’s cake I didn’t need to make a third.

On the eve of her first birthday, we went out to dinner and her & Rocco got birthday sundaes and the wait staff sang them the birthday song. She also got to enjoy some chocolate cupcake on the night before her birthday… she liked it a LOT and was very messy after, so I had high hopes for her cake destruction abilities.

On her birthday, we first sang happy birthday to Rocco, then we sang to Giuliana. She seemed to not really understand we were all singing the birthday song TO her, but she had fun listening to us all singing and giggled as we sang the song twice.

Gabby blew out her birthday candle. And, then we put the cake right in front of her to see what she’d do. She kept looking back at me saying “Ohhhh? Ohhh?” with her hand stretched out just above the cake, almost as if she was asking me if it was ok to touch it. I kept encouraging her to touch it and taste the frosting and eventually helped put her hand onto the cake so she knew it was ok. Then, she tasted the frosting and smiled REALLY big. She kept touching it, picking at it more and then tried feeding cake to me too. Yum! After 10 minutes of this, she decided to stand up so I held her hands since she was on the table and then she decided to step into her cake. Now THAT is the kind of first birthday excitement that I was looking for! After stomping on her cake twice – she was done with it. Then it was time for the traditional birthday bath to wash all the chocolate off her foot, legs, hands and face.

We are quite certain Giuliana had a fantastic first birthday!

First birthday presents included her name letters for her bedroom wall, a hand made piggy bank (that painted at Gabby’s birthday party!), fun new toys, a special ballet skirt, some new clothes, pajamas, shoes, and then her and Rocco received two joint gifts - a new kitchen/bakery and a new kids table with different colored chairs.

Happy First Birthday, Giuliana!! You are truly an angel sent from above! We can’t imagine life without you and we love you more than words!!