Ally May

Ally is just about to turn a year old. I cannot believe how fast the last year has gone and how different our lives have become since Ally was born. Already I can see her personality developing and she has been such in blessing in my life. Ally is not going to take the backseat and let Emily outshine her. In fact, they share the driver's seat equally. Ally is much more of an explorer than Emily was. I never worried about Emily getting into closets and cabinets that she shouldn't get into because she never tried (I know, this is Emily we are talking about, but she just never was interested in that stuff). Ally is constantly getting into things she shouldn't. She is climbing on everything she can including Emily's bed, the couch, the coffee table, chairs, slides, and much much more. She is a super fast crawler. She can get from one side of our house to the other in a matter of seconds (depending on her motivation). She can walk with one hand being held and she can now stand on her own for several seconds. She has been purposefully lengthening her stand alone time and I think she is going to be walking very soon. The problem we are having in trying to motivate her to walk is she thinks we are playing a game with her. Dave and I will sit across from each other and try to encourage her to walk to the other. Instead of trying to take a step, she leans forward and falls into our arms. She thinks it is funny to try and see how long it will take us to catch her. Ally is such a good eater. I was super nervous about introducing solids to her just because I had a really bad experience with Emily. Emily is just really picky and my mom says that I was the same way when I was little. I guess it is payback for what my mom had to go through. Ally on the other hand, has liked just about everything I have given her to try. She is no longer needing mushed food, she can eat just about anything in small chunks. Emily used to spit out anything with texture. Ally is down to one bottle a day. The doctor told me that when she turns a year old, she won't need a bottle anymore. I have tried to give her milk a couple of times, and she is not a big fan. I am not sure how the transition out of bottles is going to go if she won't drink milk. She has gotten the hang of drinking out of a sippy cup, but she doesn't understand that you have to tilt the cup to get the drink to come out. Ally is already talking to us. She can sign please and all done. She has started saying thank you which sounds like tata but we know what it means. She definitely identifies Dave as dada and she is starting to say mama which was nana for a while. When Dave comes home from work, she crawls as quickly as she can towards the door and says dada, dada. Emily always runs and hides. She likes to be surprised. Ally can also identify the Old MacDonald book we have and when she sees it she says "Ee I ee I!" She likes to brush her own hair and she pretends anything black and small is a telephone and she says "hello" with it up to her ear.
I could go on and on about Ally but I wanted to write a little bit so I can always remember her at this age. I feel so blessed to have Ally in my life and I will never forget the time when we almost lost her before we even knew her.
Ally sporting the goggles. She loved having them on and she crawled all around the house with them on.

Ally helping with the dishes.

Seconds after this picture, Ally fell.