Happy Birthday Allison!

Happy Birthday Allison!

Allison turns one officially tomorrow, but that hasn’t stopped us from celebrating early. On Saturday, Steve’s parents threw a small family luncheon. The girls really enjoyed eating their sandwiches, chips (Katherine only) and the very cool Disney cake that Grandma ordered from Hoffman’s. Afterwards, their cousins arrived, and the kids played inside and outside – playing with marbles and hunting bugs. Both girls were exhausted, and we took them home for some much needed R&R.

On Sunday we hosted a relatively small birthday party with Katherine and Allison’s friends. I would describe this as relatively small compared to Katherine’s first birthday party which involved a caterer, storyteller and about 40+ people stuffed in our house. In contrast, we had about five families tie-dying t-shirts in the garage. Steve was a bit apprehensive the night before – which resulted in yards of plastic covering all work surfaces in the garage and laundry room. Thankfully everyone managed to emerge unscathed and undyed from our craft project. We have about 20 shirts for friends and us sitting in the garage right now waiting for their rinse and wash cycle. We’ll see how they turn out!! The only bummer was that Allison had a weird allergic reaction to her birthday cake. About 20 minutes after trying the frosting and cake the area around her mouth turned red. I guess she won’t be getting any more birthday cake from Larry’s anymore – although the cake from Hoffman produced no reaction at all. Very puzzling.

Tomorrow we’ll have early dinner at my mom’s house with noodles and any other traditional foods. The first birthday is a BIG deal in Chinese tradition, so we’ll wrap up our festivities tomorrow evening. I still can’t believe it’s been a year since we went to the hospital. Allison is still such a skinny small kid that she really doesn’t look like she’d be one yet.

Finally…she’s walking…really walking

Everyone who’s seen Allison scoot, crawl, roll and cruise around has said, “She’s just days from walking.” They’ve been saying this for about a month. Well….(big drum roll)….we finally saw her really walk today!! I’m not talking about a step or two here or there. This was the real deal.

After dinner tonight, Katherine and Allison were wrestling for the shopping cart in the family room. Katherine predictably took it away from Allison and loaded it up with all of Allison’s new birthday toys. She pulled it away, and Allison let go of the cart. I didn’t realize this until Steve walked by, gasped and pointed – but Allison must have stood by herself for a good five seconds. Then, she took 5 or 6 steps to the grocery cart. Katherine was more than happy to replicate this; she would keep the cart out of reach and Allison would stagger to it taking half a dozen relatively steady steps to it.

I taped it on our big old video camera for posterity. Funny enough, Patty’s been saying that Allison has been taking one or two steps for several weeks, but they happen so quickly that I usually wasn’t sure if / when it happened. Tonight’s incident was unmistakable, and we all cheered for the very happy birthday girl.

Talking Too

Allison’s vocabulary is starting to really take off, and it’s funny which words she’s chosen to learn first…

1. Mama, Dada
2. Dog – loves to watch Bisco in the living room from the alcove upstairs
3. Agua
4. Ball – (sounds like bawl)
5. Shoe
6. Hot – usually when she’s heading straight for her little heater
7. Up – she said this yesterday at the bottom of the stairs to tell Steve she wanted to crawl up!

I’m still amazed at the rate of growth. I’m going to have to start up the old word spreadsheet again to track her vocabulary (did it for Katherine until we got to 300 words). I swear tonight that she said, “cool.” If she says it again, we’ll just add it to the list. 🙂

Picking up Mom and Dad’s sayings

Katherine is picking up a lot of sayings from us and from her classroom. Some are funny, some are not and some are just annoying. As Steve said, “I had no idea how much I said that until Katherine starting saying it.” Here are some of her favorite sayings and their origins…

1. “Alwright” – from me
2. “I don’t know” – from Steve
3. “Freeze my patootie” – from me
4. “Wait…let me think” – where did this come from??
5. “I guess…” – no idea
6. “Hey guys! What are you doing?” – from class
7. “Wait to go Idaho” – from Toy Story

We’ve also had to deal with “stupid” which came from a classmate. She’ll say, “I didn’t say stupid. I said soopid.” Argh. You have to love preschool.