This Year's Girl

My baby girl is one year old today. I can't believe it! She seems so much younger to me. I don't know if its because she is short for her age, or that she still nurses so much and wakes up throughout the night, or if its just that she's my baby, but I just cannot get my head around the fact that she is already a year old.

Exactly one year ago I was having my incredible, intense, crazy waterbirth. Its strange how labor can hurt so very much, and yet I still feel nostalgic for the experience. I guess its sort of like running a marathon or climbing a mountain or something, where it feels like hell while you are doing it but afterwords you feel the most amazing sense of accomplishment (plust you get a baby out of it!). I still sometimes watch the birth video and think to myself, "I can't believe I did that!". I've witnessed many a birth and done it twice myself, but it still amazes me that we can actually grow a person inside our bodies, and even more amazingly can push them out. How is that even possible??

Anyway I digress. Juliet is no longer my little newborn, she's my babbling, standing, smiling, bouncing, peek-a-boo playing, clapping, waving, banana eating, cuddling, loving one-year-old little girl. And that, my friends, is just five-by-five.

Here she is just seconds after being born

And here she is celebrating her first birthday!