Birthday Girl

Melanie is One!
I can't believe she is one, it really has been a long year, it has flown by but it also has been a long one. Lots of holding and helping her along. Her birthday was on the 20th, and we had her check up today. Her stats are:
Weight: 17lb 1oz     (below 5%)
Height: 30 3/4in.     (92%)
Head: 18in.     (65%)
Still really low in the weight department, but the main thing we are focusing on is that she is progressing. Our physical therapist has been talking with our doctor and apparently he thinks(didn't tell us) that she has some type of syndrome. I don't like that word, and although she might, she is still just as perfect as ever. Just slow in some areas, the doctor seems concerned, he always mentions that she still holds onto her thumbs when she clenches her fists which should go away around 4 months. So, with that, we are going to meet with a neurologist first, just to scan her brain and get that checked, and then possibly go to a geneticist after that. Our physical therapist says that she could be crawling in a month. She is basically sitting, just not totally stable. She also got 5 shots, one was the flu shot we forgot to get the second dose of in December, and she did awesome, she cried but not too long and she loved the sucker we gave her afterwards. She also got her toe poked to test her iron.
Since we are going to be getting family pictures taken later in the spring, I decided to take some 1 year pictures and try out some of my features on my little point and shoot camera. And I love how they turned out. Melanie has always had such a nice complexion and has never really scratched her face.

This is her classic smile that she always gives us, gets the whole face involved when she smiles.

Then I plopped her on the ground and changed to a soft high key effect. I really like this setting on my camera, gives it such a soft finish. I haven't touched up these photos at all, just cropped them.

 My camera also has a nice black and white setting. One of her new toys she got for her birthday, she hated it when she first saw it and would move her hand away every time it came near, but she loves it now.

She loves this giraffe we got from Deseret Book for her for Christmas, she loves to pull the hair.

 Here is a series of pictures of something she Loves, pulling hair, especially short hair, she gets her mouth all crooked and gets in the zone.

Getting her head up close.

 Mouth crooked and in this one you can see her wandering eye(looks kind of weird).

 She gets in really close and closes her eyes and just pulls.

 Julie came over and was being really cute with Melanie, holding her hand and giving her kisses.

Melanie looks like she is loving it also. So cute.

 One ways Rob gets Melanie to stay sitting up, he sure gets some crazy ideas sometimes.

 She found her feet about 3 weeks ago, which means her core strength is getting better.

She loves quinoa, brown rice, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, bread, and oatmeal. She is not into fruit very much.
She slept through the night twice during this last week, not in a row, but that makes a total of 3 times in the last year that she has slept through the night. Hoping that it will happen a little more frequent now. She basically only wakes up once most nights.
Man, love this girl and the progress she is making.