Julia is enjoying a world that she can communicate with. She has mastered a squeal and babble to get our attention. She points with her finger to what she wants or where she wants to go to. Her little arm is extended straight with a lot of excitement when she is pointing. She still has her wild arm wave of excitement when she sees us with something she wants, generally food. The last couple of days have brought the sign language sign ‘More’ when she is interested in eating or wanting more food. Recently, she started raising her arms to be picked up, and occasionally she is saying ‘UP’ at the same time.

I wonder what she will start doing tomorrow. We are seeing new things everyday!

We played this morning in our pj’s. The girls sure like to play together and both were uninterested in looking at the camera. Julia is interested in anything that Emily has or wants. Julia will chase Emily around the room trying to play with her. Emily knows that she can get up on the chair or the couches to escape Julia’s hands. Emily was trying to give Julia a hat for the photo by placing a toy on her head.

An assortment of photos from Julia’s one year photos. She was great for the photos and we had a good time together. As much as I tried to get a photo of her with her teddy bear, it just didn’t work. She enjoyed playing with the balloons and smiling at Mommy.

Tonight was Julia’s last bath in the baby bath. I know we have waited a long time, but it was just easier to get her clean and she wasn’t interested in playing. Her interest in playing in the tub has taken off so she will join Emily in the big girl tub. I decided to commemorate her last baby bath with photos. Her favorite game was to drop all of the toys out of the baby bath and then look for them and put them back in the tub. She discovered that she could spin around, flip herself over, and wiggle away from Mommy. Soapy babies are fun to hold onto!

I was lucky to watch Emily play Doctor with Julia as they played together. It was mesmerizing and I was lucky to get any photos of it because I didn’t want to disturb their play. As I watched them play, Emily measured Julia’s head size, took her temperature under her arm, gave her a shot on her arm, looked in her ear, and then listened to her heart. When she held the stethoscope to her chest she said ‘thump, thump’. For the most part Julia stood and allowed Emily to perform the various doctor tasks. At one point Emily told Julia not to cry, I wondered if the shot was coming next.

The only problem in the play was that Julia wanted to help herself to the doctor kit and Emily wasn’t in a sharing mood. We temporarily solved the problem by giving Julia a phone so that she could call the doctor to entertain her hands. I guess Emily has been to the doctor a few times.

Swinging is a favorite of both of the girls. Julia’s smile just gets bigger when she is swinging toward you.

Julia is sporting her first tooth, the bottom front-left tooth. I doubled checked to be sure – showing off her teeth to anyone is not a favorite of Julia’s. I guess it was her first birthday gift to herself. She is continuing to work on more teeth. We haven’t let the lack of teeth hold us back on food options though. If she sees real solid food she becomes disinterested in her puree food and likes to sample the grown-up food. Her favorite is Mommy’s bagel.