birthday girl

Charlotte is now 12 months old {I prefer to label her age in months and will continue to do so as long as I can in an effort to ignore the fact that she is, in fact, getting older}.

At 12 months, Charlotte:

Weighs 17 lbs {10th percentile}, is 27 inches long {42nd percentile}
Is beginning to take a few wobbly steps {though as I’m finally writing this, she is practically running now}
Is learning to turn around backwards to climb down stairs/off ledges
Can feed herself with a spoon {though prefers her hands} and is now refusing to be fed anything via spoon by mommy or daddy and will turn her head away if we try {I just want to keep her clothes clean, is that too much to ask??}
Loves to give her baby doll hugs, particularly when others are watching and applauding… such a little performer… though once she get’s an ‘awww’ from mommy, baby is thrown to the floor. We’ll work on that.
Says: hi, bye bye, daddy, up, all done, thank you, ball, baby, balloon, book, Baxter {though ball, Baxter, and balloon all sounds the same right now}
Can sign: open, more, eat, please {her favorite right now is ‘please’}
Points to everything, waves to everyone, claps, gives high fives, is learning to give kisses, plays peek-a-boo, and dances to music
Understands and can follow several directions: give it to me, sit down, put in, all done, clean up, don’t touch/no, nice hands/gentle

Here are Charlotte’s 12 month photos, taken by the talented Kelly Lewis.

I made Charlotte’s ‘smash cake’, and I am pretty proud of the end result.

Though I have to be honest, my initial cake trial looked like something from the website Cake Wrecks:

Haha, I am still laughing at my attempt. I was trying to make a giant cupcake, but my efforts to also make the cake healthy and the frosting healthy resulted in a goopy mess. I ended up just using the base of the cake form and opted for peaked frosting instead of trying to smooth it out. To color the frosting I used beet juice {practically odorless and tasteless} to achieve the perfect pink!