Cici's First Birthday!

Happy one year to my beautiful daughter, Cecilia!

Cici stats:

Weight: an informal weight check shows around 22 pounds.
Clothing size: we are well into the 18-month clothes.
Teeth: Just four total-- two top and two bottom. It gives her such a funny little smile :-D

Gross motor: loves cruising, is thinking about walking. She can stand by herself and stand from a squat, and actually pivoted a couple steps the other day!
Language: Can say "Dog" and "Dat" (cat). Says "Dad" (Granddad) when she sees my father. Lately, she has been HUGE on pointing at objects.
Social: Loves waving bye-bye. She has repertoire of several different waves, and she go through every one of them when saying goodbye. Gives lots of big, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses. Tries to share her food with everyone.
Favorite foods: Goldfish, apples, peppers, Cheerios, ham, fried eggs, stir fry, oatmeal, cranberries
Favorite activities: Climbing up (but not down) stairs, looking at books, meeting new people at my parents' restaurant, hanging out with Grandma and her dogs and cats, dumping things out of their containers, sneaking away to play in the toilet, listening to music, watching the washing machine do a load.
Favorite toys: Allen's Hot Wheels cars, our wooden dinosaur teether, the xylophone, measuring spoons, alphabet blocks (we stack 'em, she knocks 'em!), a little wooden doll from a set I painted for the kids a couple years ago.


Cici's birthday was on Saturday, but we had a lot of stuff going on that day, so we had a little party on Sunday evening. My parents came over, and we ate a sumptuous feast of abundant Totino's pizzas and salad. Oh yeah, we went all-out on this party, haha. Adam, our cake-baker-in-residence, made Cici a cute dog-shaped cake, as well as a small purple cake for the express purpose of getting smashed by the birthday girl.

Angry that she is not face-first in her cake already

Oscar and Allen were kind of confused about the cakes at their first birthdays, but not Cici! She dug around and squished frosting through her fingers and generally destroyed the cake in a highly entertaining fashion. Definitely worth the price of admission!

Meeting Miss Cici

So, between the time that I stopped blogging and now, another branch to our family tree appeared:

Cecilia Marietta (we call her Cici for short) was born this past April. We have had Cecilia picked out as our girl's name for a very long time- before we were even married, I think- so we didn't have to scramble for several days after she was born for a name, like we did with Allen! Music has always been a big part of our lives, so having a namesake for Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, seemed appropriate. Marietta is an old, old family name on my side that goes back to at least the 1880's. My great-aunt Marietta passed away a few years ago, sadly, so it was time for someone new to carry the name!

What she likes to do these days: get into Oscar's building creations, hang out with Grandma, and ingest every little delicious particle she can find on the floor. Cici also has quite the vocabulary!

Mama = MAMA!
Dog= DAH!
Cat= DAH!
Doll= DAH!
Book= DAH!
Adam= DAH-DAH!

She is ridiculously fun, and we are so glad she's here with us (most of us, anyways. Allen still has deep reservations about this whole new baby business).