Aria's One Year Wellness Checkup

Aria had a great time at the doctor's office today. Despite having to wait quite a while, she had fun pointing at all the decorations in the lobby. As usual, she was poked, prodded and measured. She is 28.5inches tall (25-50th percentile), 21lbs 3z (50-75th percentile) and head circumference 46.8cm (90th percentile).

The doctor said she was slimming down a bit, which may be too all the activity she's been doing recently. She's just started to take a few unassisted steps, but prefers to hold onto or push things while walking or just crawl. She's also started to climb things, which is a bit scary. Even though she is short, she some how manages to climb up on beds, sofas, and step ladders. Most of the time, she remembers to go feet first when climbing down, but sometimes she is a bit TOO fearless.

Her pediatrician was pleased with her language development. She has a few signs down well (milk, more, all done) and gestures (bye-bye, pointing). She has a few words da(dog), buh buh (for bubble), booh (book), booboo (same funny nursing word that I talk Xander), mah (more), dada, and mama. She likes to look at books, point at pictures, and turn the pages. She has her non-verbal ways to show us that she really understands what we are saying.

Aria is sleeping through the night, and the doctor was happy about that. When she is well, she sleeps from 7:30pm to about 4am, then with a little setting, again from 4am to 6am. This ought to be perfect with the time changes this weekend. I guess she just likes to sleep because we haven't employed any sleep training.

She received 3 vaccines (MMR, HepA, and chicken pox). I was doing a little dance as she FINALLY got her chicken pox vaccine. Yay!

We got a prescription for Aria's own eczema treatment. We had been using some of Xander's steroid cream on her, which is fine. He hasn't had any outbreaks for a long time (can't even remember the last). Now she has her own. Hopefully, she'll grow out of it as well as Xander has.

I think I got some brownie points with the doctor. I was giving Aria freeze dried strawberries as a snack while we waited. The doctor thought it was a very healthy snack and wondered where I got them. The kids love these. They are the slightly less mess travel version of real strawberries.

All in all it was a good visit. For posterity's sake, I'll share a few more notes on this time in Aria's life. She continues to be a very social baby. She has a reputation of "always smiling" at school, quite often willing to enjoy interacting with strangers. The teachers and staff have picked up how very different she is from Xander (who is much more shy like me).

As you can tell from pictures, she still doesn't have much hair. In addition, her hair color is light so she almost seems like she has none. I'll just count my blessings that she'll be out of the messy stage before she has enough hair to get food stuck in it.

She seems like a pretty observant little cookie. She watches very closely when I explain and demonstrate how to use a toy and is often to eager to try to do it herself. Just like her brother at this age, whatever is new is the most interesting thing. Which book to read? The one we haven't read before. Which toy to play with? The one I haven't played with before or recently.

She's starting to assert her opinion more. She can be very vocal if I or Xander take something she wants away from her including myself! As a side note, Xander is SO tolerant of her. I always felt bad for the dogs when Xander attacked them, now Xander's getting some karma back as Aria attacks him.

All in all, I can't believe my baby is a year old. I'm looking forward to this next year and all the fun of toddlerhood.