What a wonderful year!

WE MADE IT!!! Happy 2 years of parenting! We put another 2 years under our belts! I will start out saying that life with a little when they are 12-24 months has its ups and downs. Toddler life is vastly different than newborn life. As we wished and hoped for our little one would hit her next milestones we would soon have new mountains to climb. Walking, talking, oh my! First comes those sweet baby steps. I have to admit I was happy our peanut took longer to learn to walk than others. We pretty much skipped crawling and went straight to walking right after her 1st Birthday. Although we were thrilled to see our little become more independent and take her own steps it was by far the hardest period of this “parenting” thing. Every object becomes a hazard. Somehow she was a magnet to every sharp corner, trip hazard, and large item that could in some way harm her. This is where the “parent shadow” comes into in play. Oh you thought now that your little one was more independent you’d be able to scroll pinterest or load the dishwasher… think again. I loved seeing her explore the world but it left little time for anything else. Lets just say our house was some what of a wreck then 🙂

Then the words, and more words started coming! Sign language was a huge help for us during the early days of communication. I can’t stress enough how this helped us through those rough moments of panic for milk or food. Now a days its lots of mama, dada, sit, come, hush (to our crazy puppies who like to bark constantly), and more food, and every now and then “cookies?”. I’m so proud of how far she has come and continues to learn something new everyday. Our little love has grown into a little lady and is so independent. It fills my heart knowing that she loves going to school and learning from her sweet teachers. She loves following their lead and loves helping out the other children in class

To sum up the last year: 1. You can really function on a lot of coffee to make up for the loss of sleep. 2. Babies love their schedule and if you mess with it you pay for it! 3. Sweet baby snuggles and milestones make your year and forget all those tough moments. 4. Hello Toddlerhood!

We’ve gotten a taste of toddler life the past week. Diaper changes, pjs changes, meal time and the lovely car seat buckling have all turned into a wrestling, bribing, or game plans with lots of change of directions/distractions. I’m looking forward to all the exciting memories we will create this year even though we  will come across the inevitable tantrums. So here is to year 2 and the after hour bedtime mommy juices that will be consumed after those crazy toddler days 😉