Happy First Birthday Katerina

Today is Katerina's first birthday. She was born today at 11:05am one year ago. While we celebrated last weekend, today, Katerina, Baba and I stayed home a little later and enjoyed a yummy breakfast of eggs, toast and sausage.

Then Katerina brought in cup cakes to school. Her teacher, Ms. Sharon, said she didn't drop one piece of that cupcake--I think she really liked it!

She must have known it was her birthday today because she only napped for 15 minutes at school, but despite that she was all smiles when I picked her up at the end of the day.

It is hard to believe an entire year has passed. It has been a wonderful year. Parenthood is a blessing and it certainly teaches you a lot about yourself. In this blog post, in addition to writing about Katerina's milestones, I have also included some of my own.

Here are some of Katerina's recent milestones:

• She is legitimately walking now, even on grass
• She has fallen in love with a stuffed Kitty, and sleeps with it at nap time and at bed time
• She now drinks whole milk out of a sippy cup (although we are still struggling to get her to drink enough during the day)
• She no longer drinks out of bottles (although sometimes I wonder if she misses them)
• Sometimes she will try to repeat a sound you are saying...such as "Ba" or "Kitty"...or at least it sounds that way

In the past year, Mommy has:

• Learned that babies change every day
• Learned patience... and that sometimes things do not always go according to plan... and that's okay
• Learned that a child can make you smile even on your most difficult days
• Learned that there if often not one right answer when parenting...sometimes its trial and error and each child is different
• Learned to appreciate the little things in life such as Katerina's good morning smile, her laugh when playing a game and how much fun it is to simply watch her observe and explore the world around her

Happy First Birthday Katerina!