Anastasia recognised and could consistently point out to us the number ‘1’. This is the first letter or word she has ever shown that she could read (although, there have been moments for around six months where it appeared that she might reconignise her on own name).

It helps that Thomas the Tank Engine has a number 1 painted on him.

Anastasia turned one today.

We survived the first year. Our sanity and health are still, largely, intact.

Here are some things you might like to know.

Vital stats

At one year old, Anastasia weighs a bit over 11kg and is around 80cm tall. This means she is already more than half Tegan’s height and we therefore expect her to be tall, like me, rather than short like Tegan.

Tracking her growth over the year, she has essentially grown in proportion to where she started, being in about the 90-100th percentile for girls at the same age, although her height and head circumference are now off the chart. She is not small.

Health

The issue we had with her hips at birth was essentially resolved by the time she was three months old. She wore the pavlik harness for 13 weeks, but since then her hips have been perfectly normal and the orthopaedic surgeon at first thought that the hip displaysia may have been a mis-diagnosis – so she has done exceptionally well in that regard.

In general her health was really great up until about three months ago. Since the start of winter she has been almost constantly sick. She has had two or three bouts of bronchitis, constant colds and at least one case of croup. Tegan took her back to the doctor today who said that at the rate she is going it looks as though she will develop childhood asthma. This is not particularly surprising, as Tegan suffered very bad asthma and has only had hers under proper control for the last three or four years. That said, other parents I work with say that it is better to go through this now than later. I have been told that once they start school you can tell the kids who have never been in child care or a play group because they are essentially constantly sick for the first two years. That sounds much worse.

Sleep

I almost remember what good sleep feels like.

I jest, mostly. Anastasia slept brilliantly from the time she was about six weeks old. At six weeks she was sleeping for five to six hours in a row at night and by nine weeks old was sleeping for 11 hours at night. This was blissful and other parents were insanely jealous. However, since Anastasia has been sick so much this winter, her sleep has been really interrupted and we have now hardly had a good nights sleep for weeks or months. It’s exhausting.

General development

Anastasia started crawling at a bit over six months old. At one she is not quite walking – she loves cruising around the living room while holding onto her walker toy or a dining chair and can walk around while holding on to furniture, but she doesn’t quite have the balance to walk on her own.

She is getting pretty talkative. Her first word was ‘Dad’ at about six months old, followed by ‘Mum’ a few weeks later. She can also (mostly) say ‘thank you’, ‘bird’ and a few other things – but most of these you wouldn’t be able to understand unless you heard them in the right context and could associate them with what she was trying to say.

She likes:

• music, especially rock music to which she can bop along
• her ‘Kaloo‘ bear
• cheese, especially King Island double or triple brie
• baths and showers
• books
• applause
• people, especially Mummy and Daddy
• pulling Tupperware and tea towels out of their drawers in the kitchen and putting them back again
• playing peek-a-boo

She dislikes:

• getting in trouble and not being allowed to do things she shouldn’t be doing
• booing and negative language
• plasticy ‘cheese’
• Heinz baby food
• Moet

Her birthday

We sang happy birthday to Anastasia several times today, which she thought was hilarious and which she really loved.

Her first birthday present she actually got early. We decided to buy her a walker toy, but she got it three weeks ago when after work one day she was walking around the dining room by holding onto a dining chair and pushing it around in front of her – we figured she had a need for the walker right then and that she really wouldn’t understand the significance of waiting until her birthday anyway. The box that the walker came in was also a favourite toy for the following few weeks.

Today, she received a touchy-feely book, ‘That’s Not My Dragon‘, new shoes and a set of percussion instruments. So far she is having great fun with them.

We are having a party for Anastasia this weekend. Actually, it’s a high tea with champagne and it’s less for her than a chance for us to celebrate surviving the first year. She won’t remember it anyway, but we’ll ensure there’s a photo of her with a cupcake and a candle for posterity.

Photos

We have taken hundreds and hundreds of photos of Anastasia (and of almost nothing else since she was born). There are lots of them up on our respective Flickr photostreams, though not all of them are made public. We would have to add you as a contact in order to see the ones marked for friends and family – make a Flickr account and add us as contacts if you’re interested.

What else

Anastasia is a real blessing and we continually thank God for her. We love her so much. There have been so many lovely moments – it’s hard to recall them all when writing something up like this. We are really looking forward to seeing her continuing development.

But we’re not ready for another one.