Sydney's 1st Birthday!

Sometimes it's hard to believe it's been a year since Sydney was born and other times, when I look through the thousands of pictures I've taken of her or the days when she's not her best, I think yup, we've been at this for a whole year. I wouldn't trade one day of it though. She's the best thing that has happened to Geoff and me.

We had a birthday party for Sydney up at camp and the weather couldn't have been any better. We managed to squeeze a beautiful day in between two rainy ones. Sydney's a lucky girl to have so many 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins her age. She'll be able to grow up with them and have life-long friends. Here are some pictures from her party:

Lily (2nd cousin) and Sydney

Eating lunch

Lily and Sydney swimming and wading in her baby pool

Grady (2nd cousin) and Sydney

Her enormous birthday cake and believe it or not, there wasn't much left-over. It was a banana split cake. White cake with banana and raspberry filling and whipped cream frosting...mmmm.

Lighting her candles

Excited before digging in!

Mmmm... sugar.

I think she's had enough. She often gets this bitter/sour face when she can't bear to take another bite. Of course, most of what she ate was frosting.

Sharing some frosting with Tyra

Family pic

Riding her new train the next morning

Figuring out how Elmo Live works...

Talking and more talking

Sydney's vocabulary is expanding. She can say mama, dada, bye-bye, tata (Tyra), dat dat (pat, pat - petting the dog), bat bat (backpack), and a few others that are escaping me. She's still shaking her head yes and no also. Her bedtime is creeping to closer to 8:00pm and she wakes up anywhere between 6:30am and 8:00am. I can see 8 teeth now and a few more white spots where more teeth are coming. She's still putting everything in her mouth... and I mean everything! On the up side of that, she eats just about anything I put in front of her. She's pretty much eating food that we eat now. I switched to whole milk last week and she didn't mind at all. She sucked down her bottle and took a 2 hour nap.

Sydney climbs. She's figured out that if she's in the grocery cart, hangs onto the bar in front of her and lifts her leg, she can stand... IN the cart. I turned around in line to find her like this. Pretty scary. The straps on the cart cover don't hold her in either. She now tries to climb out of her stroller too. There was a toy drum in her pack n play she used as a step stool to get out and figured out that if she stands on cans from the pantry she can reach the second shelf to rip things down. Four more days and she'll be 1... how can that be?

Riding her rocking horse... or lamb

Pushing her baby stroller. She uses her stroller as a cart. Notice she has loaded in it a few blocks, her toy remote and, if you look closely, she has also borrowed a spoon that she is pushing around (she nabbed it when I was emptying the dishwasher). I just think it is so funny that she pushes around her favorite things. She's a little person that saw what others do at the grocery store and wants to do it too... or she's on her way to being a bag lady :)

He loves me, he loves me not... she loves plucking off the petals on flowers.

Playing with Sean and Madison in her baby pool.

Cozy & warm with Mom after a swim

Hi!

Driving the boat with Grandma Kent

4th of July Family Pic

Standing Alone!

Sydney started standing alone over the weekend for longer periods of time. She does it best when she's focused on something, like her favorite show - Dora the Explorer. She dances and claps whenever the theme song comes on. I caught her on video tonight. If I kneel in front of her with my hands out hoping she'll take a step, she drops to the floor and crawls to me. We're getting closer to walking anyway!

Summer Fun!

Just about every weekend we've been staying up at camp. For those of you that don't know, camp is on Panther Lake, about 10 miles north of Oneida Lake. It's just under an hour from our house. Weather hasn't been great this summer, but we have gotten a few nice days. On those good days Sydney likes to wade in her baby pool. She plays with her toys in there and dips her face right in the water. Sometimes it's followed by a gasp of air, as if she's surprised by what happens when she dips her face in.

Sydney's getting closer to walking, but still gets nervous about standing without holding onto something or someone. Instead of falling to land on her butt she's starting to lean forward to catch herself with her hands, which I think is another step closer to standing alone.

I'll have a 4th of July update soon.

Sydney making her goofy smile face

In her 'big girl' Adirondack chair at camp. Oh, and she's playing Grandma's Tetris. She's thrown it so many times that the annoying Tetris song is barely audible.

Loving watermelon

Mmmmm....

Trip to the Big Apple

Sorry, I've been on summer hours and have a lot of catching up to do. We went to NYC in the beginning of June to go to the Belmont Stakes horse race and a Yankee game. Below are some pictures from our trip.

Sydney is still cracking us up and doing something new everyday. This morning she climbed a flight of stairs on her own (with supervision), but is still being very cautious about walking. If I stand her up and let go of her, she immediately buckles her knees once she realizes no one is hanging on to her. If she's not paying attention I have been able to get her to stand on her own for about 7 seconds. Then she realizes she's solo, looks at me with wide eyes, like, "Mom! What the heck?!" and buckles or reaches out for me.

My first Yankee game!

Already making faces when Mom wants a nice picture

The new stadium is beautiful

Yea!!! Go Team!

That was really tiring...

My first horse race - The Belmont Stakes

Posing with Mom and Dad

Hanging with Uncle James and Aunt Kristin

Watching the horse race with Uncle Mike, Grandma and Grandpa Kent

Photo Day

Our nice neighbor took these wonderful pictures of Sydney. I hope to get some done a few times a year since she is changing so quickly. She is making progress daily in the walking department. Sydney pushes around anything she can including her walker, her little rocking chair, her doll's baby stroller and sometimes even our kitchen chairs. Her favorite thing to play with is books. She can have a thousand toys surrounding her and she still crawls over to her box of books, tips it over, pulls several out and starts turning the pages. Sometimes she'll babble as she 'reads' the pages. She'll be 10 months next week. So hard to believe!

Never fail, you hand her a stuffed toy and she squeals as she squeezes and hugs it. It doesn't matter if she's seen it a hundred times.Pushing her baby stroller

Eating the flower at her photo shoot outside. We figured out the hard way that maybe this wasn't the right flower to hand her. She bit the top and had a whole bunch of tiny petals in her mouth. I finger scooped them out as she clenched her jaw and bit my finger. It ended with a few gags from the petals I apparently didn't get and a screaming baby. I think she may have been a little hungry... what's new.

9 months old

very serious...

Sydney and her 2nd cousin, Jordan

Sydney had a successful 9 month visit at the pediatrician and didn't need to get any shots because she was all caught up on them. She is still in the 95th percentile for length and weight for her age, weighing 23 lbs and 29" long. She had all kinds of little tests like banging two blocks together and turning toward sounds. The doctor said she did excellent.

Sydney is getting into everything. I just put up the baby gates today. I could have done it sooner, but have been putting it off since they are a pain to step over. She likes to get into Tyra's toys and food, so it has to be done. Sydney now pulls herself up to a standing position and can say 'dada.' Maybe for Mother's day she'll say 'mama,' yeh right...