Madeline: Year One Retrospective

Seeing as I did one of these for my boy on his first birthday, I reckon it's only fair to do one for my little girl. The only thing lacking are sonograms of Maddy, which we never had scanned.

Enjoy!

Ten Minutes OldMaddy didn't spring whole from her mother's womb, perfect and happy the way that Stephen had. No, sir. They had trouble getting her to breathe at first, and she spent a good time under an oxygen hood (pictured). She was puffy and generally unhappy, and I was worried sick.

One Day OldIt turned out well enough. Maddy was a lot fussier than Stephen, and Amy wasn't feeling so hot after the surgery. I was very much attached to my little girl right from the start, though.

One Month OldMaddy continued to be fussy, but I don't recall it being terrible. Getting used to another baby in the house wasn't as big a transition this time around. After Stephen, we could do anything. It was all old hat.

Two Months OldThis is when Maddy started to smile, when she started to get a personality of her own instead of being just another demanding, crying, screaming, diaper-filling machine.

3 Months OldI'm pretty sure she started getting happier around the 3-4 month mark. Less fussiness, more character. There were times, of course, when she'd just cry and cry (like at our going-away party at Frank & Lisa's), but you could usually attribute that to her being tired, overstimulated, or both.

4 Months OldShe was just about four months old when we moved to Virginia. I remember long stretches of road where she would cry because she was hungry, or (more likely) because she was tired of being in the car seat.

5 Months OldMaddy in our new apartment in Virginia. This is probably the only home she remembers, given how young she was when we left California. She's definitely queen of the roost now. She walks around like she owns the place.

6 Months OldMy happy girl!

7 Months OldThanks to our friends and family, we had a lot of clothes for Maddy to wear. The older she gets, the more I realize that baby girls' fashions are incredibly silly. Butt ruffles are everywhere (though not on this little dress, which is one of her more fashionable outfits).

8 Months OldEight months was pre-crawling. She did a lot of rolling around, and was content to sit on our laps while we ate, or watched TV, or played computer games. Once she learned to move under her own power, those days were history.

9 Months OldFully into the crawling mode now. This picture was taken on Thanksgiving, prior to us driving to visit Amy's grandparents in Pennsylvania.

10 Months OldMaddy's first Christmas. We flew to California and saw most of our friends and loved ones. Maddy was her usual cheerful self. I think she was more or less oblivious to the holiday, but she enjoyed the attention. The plane ride, on the other hand, was quite the adventure. Never again will I fly with a child on my lap, even one as cute as my daughter.

11 Months OldHappy New Year! Unfortunately, photo taking went by the wayside in January 2008. As in, I think I've got two or three pictures of the kids in January, and this is one of them. It's a companion piece to the SS Sterilite photo I posted a week or so ago. By the tint of her rosy cheeks, I think Maddy was suffering from her first bona fide cold at the time. Poor baby!

1 Year OldEnter the now. She's a year old, and she's got an agenda. She walks, she babbles constantly, she's into everything she can get her hands on. She follows Stephen around. He manhandles her, but she gives as good as she gets. The two kids get along pretty well, though he doesn't always know his own strength. Despite the occasional intersibling violence, Maddy has no fear of her brother. At all.

That's my girl's first year in a nutshell.