Almost One Year - Are You Joking Me!

Taya's Tricks
- She does the cutest little wave.  I'll tell her to say goodbye and she'll open and close her little hand, and smile.  I make her wave to everyone just because I love it so much.
- One day I noticed that Taya will blow on her food.  I'm sure that she is constantly watching me do it for her and Milo.  The only problem is, she will hold the fork next to her mouth and suck air in instead of blowing out. Then she'll look at you like, "did you see that?"
-She learned how to give high fives at about ten months.  She thinks they are so fun.
-Taya is freakishly good with utencils for such a little baby.  She prefers to eat with a fork.  She tries to poke her own food, and if she doesn't quite make it I lob it on there for her and she shovels it in.  She eats about double if she's doing it herself. 
-She is my spastic little dancer. She loves to kick her feet and rock back and forth to music.
-Anytime she hears someone say, "yeah" she'll clap her hands.  She has to think about it real hard, so she opens her mouth and rocks a little bit to get started.  Absolutely darling.

First Words
-Taya did babble dadadada before mamamama.  I don't think that she has really associated them with us yet though.
-The first verbal connection I noticed was when she was eating one day.  I put a matchbox car up on her tray.  She drove it across the tray and said, "vroom."  She did it a lot for about a week, but now she's shy about it (I swear just because she knows I want to get it on tape).
- Taya is mimicking tones and sounds.  She loves to listen to her brother and make crazy noises to make him laugh.  Their favorite is to lay on the bed on their back and kick their feet.  They'll both say, "ah-ra-ra".

Favorite things
- Just like her brother, Tay is crazy about her blanket.  It started at about six months.  I wasn't really pushing a blanket, because I have seen the down side to blanky attachment.  But I couldn't help it she loves her purple snuggles.  I can't blame her, those Minky people know their stuff.
- Taya loves to give hugs to her babies, Woody, and stuffed animals.  However she doesn't seem extremely fascinated with any particular toy. She is too busy to play with any one thing for more than a couple of seconds.
-Taya loves it when Milo is on Dad's shoulders, and she is on mine.  We'll play hide and seek and chase.  It is so incredibly exhausting for Chris and I, but it makes both of our kids so happy that we play it almost every night. 
-Taya loves to be right in the middle of the big kids.  As a baby Taya was so easily entertained.   I could lay her on the floor with a rattle for an hour and she would be as happy as can be.  But as soon as she started crawling her temperment changed big time.  She's my crazy girl now.  If she sees Milo going down a slide, she needs to be going down the slide.  If he is on his bike, she needs to be on a bike.  She is extremely strong willed already and knows exactly what she wants.  She is still as sweet as can be, and is a really happy baby, but she went from totally chill to wound up overnight.
-Ice cream cones.  She especially loves the ones from Arctic Circle because they are little enough that she can hold them in her hand.  Yes I'm a bad mom and I give her crap like suckers and ice cream.  I guess I'm living vicariously through her.
-DRINKS.  She loves anything in a cup.  She's best with a straw and will drink, blow bubbles, and spit it everywhere.  It's our best form of entertainment for her.

Taya Hates
-If you would have asked me what Milo hated at this stage, I could have made a five page list.  Taya isn't too picky though.  Instead she is just constantly into things that I hate.
-Like sand.  The first time that she ate sand, I thought, "let her try it and cry and hate it, and then she'll learn not to do it again".  Ya not how it worked out.  Taya loves to eat handful after handful of sand. One day when Chris was changing her diaper, she was crying a ton.  When I asked what was going on, Chris just pushed the diaper toward me.  Ya, that baby digested way too much sand in one day.
-Any time she has to sit still.  Church is a joke.  Doing her hair is out of the question. I've even learned to change her diaper while she is standing up.