Karlie - 12 Months

Apparently I blinked because all of the sudden my tiny 6 pound baby is now 1 year old!  Everyone tried to warn me, "Watch out.  You'll blink and she'll be sitting up, eating by herself, crawling, talking, graduating highschool."  What has two thumbs and now refuses to blink?  THIS girl!

Well, I say it but I don't mean it.  There's a book called If I Could Keep You Little and when I first started reading it, I wanted to cry, throw it on the floor, and step on it (did I mention I was in Target?).  But by the end of the book I was thinking "Fine. Fine!  You're right.  You're completely right."  One line from the book is "If I could keep you little, I'd keep you close to me.  But then I'd miss you growing into who you're meant to be!"  And that is what JP and I look forward to most.  Seeing what God has in store for our daughter.

Karlie is growing and developing every day.  Last night on the way home from church, we were going over words with her.  With some of her words, she has quite the little southern drawl.  Her list so far is:
~ ball (baaaawl)
~ dog (gog)
~ dada
~ mama
~ cat
~ book (buh)
~ bye (biii)
~ Papa (JP's dad)
~ Pa (Paaaw - my dad)
~ car (I actually think this one should be Kar because I think she's trying to say her own name.)
~ blue

We love hearing her little voice.  She's also started to sing.  We'll say, "Karlie, can you sing a song?"  Then she'll quiet her voice and raise the pitch a little and go "La la la, la la la, la la la."

She loves to dance.  If she's sitting, she just holds her arms out and twists her upper body.  If she's standing, she wiggles her booty and bends her knees over and over again and just bounces.  To any type of music...someone singing, a ringing cell phone, Anthony beatboxing, a commercial.  We don't usually allow her to play with our cell phones, but occasionally we'll hand her JP's phone and I'll call it just to see her dance.

Karlie also loves to give hugs.  Mostly to our dogs or her toys (her stuffed animals and balls mostly) but every now and then Mommy and Daddy luck out and get a Karlie-hug.

As for walking, she hasn't conquered this yet.  She's just started showing SOME interest.  A couple weeks ago if we tried to stand her up, her legs would just turn to jello.  Now she'll walk holding onto our fingers or she'll take lots of steps with her walker.  Any day though...I'm sure all I have to do is blink.

I've let blog updating slip alot but it's just because we've been busy doing things I want to post on here.  We've backsplashed our kitchen, built an outdoor room, and we're currently working on updating our bedroom (which so far includes painting our nightstands, getting rid of our bed and my dresser, and assembling a new bed from World Market).  I also have birthday party pictures to post.