11 down, 1 to go

Dearest Sammie Girl,

We’ve made it. We’re in the home stretch. Only one more month to go until your father and I can look at each other, breathe a sigh of relief, and say “we did it—we kept an infant happy and healthy for a full year, now the hard part is over and we can just sit back and relax.”

*Okay…the cyber moms and dads of the world can stop laughing at any time now…really…you can STOP laughing and pointing your fingers at the computer screen…I know that it only gets harder from here. Kind of. We’ll see what the next seventeen years entail.*

I’ve spent much of the past few months planning/obsessing over your first birthday party, and so far, all I’ve got to show for it is a pile of plates and napkins in the spare room and the relief of having the invitations completed and in the mail. We’re going for the Sesame Street theme. You probably could care less, we could do the Dirt and Boogers theme for all you care at the moment, but I’d hate for you to have to look at your baby book** some day and see that the party consisted of nothing more than Dirt and Boogers.

So we’re continuing with the Sesame Street theme, and I’m hoping that the piece de resistance will be the four-tiered cake I’ve been mentally dreaming up for the past several weeks. Your Auntie Tamara is helping me, and I don’t want to give too too much away, but let’s just say it involves feathers, fur, and an edible bird’s nest. We’ve also had several *practice* runs that involve you eating cake, and I don’t think you’re going to be one of those one year olds whose parents have to prod them to eat the deliciousness in front of them. You’ve yet to meet a cake you don’t like. All I have to do is figure out how to distract you from the cake once you’ve eaten your fill, lest you get a case of the “Sammies” and turn on the waterworks when we try to take it away before you get a case of the “Ralphies.”

Enough about what will be…let’s chat for a moment about what IS. Namely, let’s chat about your tongue. More specifically, you like to stick it out at people. This is funny when said people know what you’re doing (which is showing the world what the snake does). It’s not so funny when random strangers think we’ve taught our eleven month old to be rude and stick her tongue out at them.

Fortunately, this past weekend’s guests (my former college roommate, Lisa, and her husband, Dave) knew that you were doing your snake impression, and didn’t shun us as parents. Rather, they joined in on the action:



While Lisa & Dave were here, Dave had fun with his super-fancy-camera-that-is-on-my-list-of-things-to-buy-when-we’re-super-rich-but-we’ll-never-be-super-rich-so-I’ll-probably-never-own-said-camera. I even managed to sweet talk him into taking a picture of us by the front door.



This may not seem like such a big deal—we weren’t even really able to get you to look at the camera and smile—but this picture is the LAST of the pictures I needed to finish the A-Z book I had started for you before we were even matched with your birthmom. It represents “H is for Home.” It was supposed to be a relatively easy project, but getting all of the pictures necessary proved to be more difficult than I had previously planned. So, it’s with great acclaim that I can say that I finished at least something** to represent your first year as a Vogt.

In other news, while you’re still not pulling yourself up to a standing position, you are able to STAY standing when I put you next to a piece of furniture you can hold on to. Standing has proven to be quite fun for you, especially when I showed you that you can make noise by banging on the top of the coffee table.

Yeah, I may regret that some day.

Happy Eleven Months, Darling!

Loving you, my spunky little girl,
Your mama

**Yeah, about that baby book…I’m still not done beyond the first few hours in the hospital—still hoping that ONE DAY I’ll have the time to scrapbook your first year like I’d like to. Any hopes for getting time to scrapbook over spring break were brushed aside in my efforts to get your birthday invitations done and in the mail. Maybe over the summer…yeah, right. Who am I kidding? That’s not going to happen, either.