Hannah - 1 year summary

It's hard to believe this all happened a year ago today! It has been a huge year in the life of our family but none of the events throughout the year compare to her arrival.

Hannah's first year has been so very different from Nathan's. From the very beginning she was her own 'little one' (my nickname for her which seems to have stuck). She is much more animated and less laid-back than her brother, which has made for some trying moments but lots of fun ones as well. With her, she is either high or low - there is no in between for her.

Hannah has generally been an excellent sleeper and has thankfully rolled with the changes throughout her first year without too many glitches in that. The exception to that has been teething - it seems to really affect her night-time sleep. She has her two bottom teeth at the moment and we are hoping that more are ready to break through since she has had some interruptions in her sleep over the past few weeks.

Hannah is scooting on her bum all over the place. She is generally much more stubborn than her brother and this has caused her to move a bit earlier than he did. She has no interest in standing at the moment and generally cries when we try and put her in that position. In spite of that she is fairly steady on her feet and I imagine she will walk earlier than Nathan's 17 months. I hope she walks earlier as I do not want to be carrying her everywhere when I'm 8 months pregnant!

Hannah's fine motor skills seem to be a bit ahead of schedule. Her pincer grasp especially has been fully developed since about 9 months. This has allowed her to feed herself all manner of food and means we can all eat at the same time! I have been much less strict about what foods were introduced to her before a year than I was with Nathan. Thankfully no sign of allergies. The only major food she hasn't tried that is a possible concern is peanut butter. I think we'll wait until a trip to the city before trying that.

Hannah is very vocal. She makes many, many different sounds, few of which seem to correspond to anything identifiable. The two words that we understand so far are 'mama' and 'dada.' I imagine that will change quickly over the next several months.

Over the next little while I want to work on Hannah's independent playtime. Right now she will play in her room happily for a few minutes. I would like to work up to 30 minutes at a time, maybe twice a day. She is not great at playing on her own (she needs to be entertained more than Nathan did at this age) and hopefully working on this will help.