My beautiful girl is already 1 year old. I can't believe she's been with us for a whole year now, and yet it's hard to remember life without her in our family. Mercy truly is a joy to us all. Her birthday was July 19th, and she is well on her way to not being a baby anymore. I keep telling her to stop growing up, but she's not listening to me. :-) Mercy is babbling a lot, trying to formulate words in her own way. She can say the important ones like mama, dada, and ge ge (older brother in the language here). Her smile lights up any room and everyone can't wait to see her every morning when she gets up. The feeling is mutual as she is delighted every morning to see her brothers. She gets very excited and happy (kicking her legs, waving her arms, and giggling) every time they come running to her room. She enjoys playing with brothers (especially playing with their toys!), "helping" them with their puzzles, and being pushed around on her new riding pony.
Mercy's not walking yet, but it won't be long now. Her mobility began with the salamander/army crawl and has progressed to normal hands and knees crawling. She will start crawling to get where she wants to go, but when she sees something she really wants she gets down on her tummy and she shoots off super fast! She's pulling up on everything, and if there is something nearby to reach for, she will take a few steps while holding on to something. She's pretty confident in getting up and down and has even climbed up on the couch while pulling up on my leg. She loves to point to people and has recently started blowing kisses when she's being extra sweet. She has learned a few signs to communicate with us, which is really helpful particularly at meal time. She is still sucking her thumb(s), but only when she's really sleepy. She prefers the right thumb, but will take the left thumb if it's more accessible at any given time. Because she's much more squirmy and mobile now, her snuggles are short-lived, but I take whatever she's willing to give me. We have all SO enjoyed having a little girl around, but maybe I've enjoyed her the most. A friend of ours mentioned to us that she totally rocks the bow, and she does it well. With all these boys around here we want her to be a girly-girl for sure. She handles their tough love quite well and will probably be quite the handful herself. We all love her so much, and we're so glad God blessed our family with our little Mercy girl!
We kind of celebrated Mercy's birthday twice since our summer friends left the day before her birthday. Her actual birthday was on Tuesday, but we did the cake on Sunday so the friends could celebrate with us. We had strawberry cake with strawberry icing so that everything would be pink (remember the girly-girl stuff here). I made two cupcakes for Mercy, one for Sunday and one for Tuesday. She wasn't too keen on the cake the first time, but on her birthday she tore it up. Well, she tore it up literally on Sunday, too, but on Tuesday she actually ate it. Check out the fun cake pictures...
Yes, we took the kids back to the fun place for Mercy's birthday, too. Usually Mercy takes a nap in the stroller, but this time she actually got to go in and play! Here are some pictures of her enjoying the fun place...
We found a Nathan's Famous restaurant in the mall and had awesome hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch that day. Mercy actually had some yummy jars of baby food, but we all enjoyed our meal out. This is Mercy in the restaurant with the New York skyline behind her. :-)
We had a great day celebrating our baby girl. Who knew having a little girl around would be so much fun for us all?! Thank you, God, for giving her to us. We love our sweet Mercy!
