Ten Months

Kate's tenth month was a big one for her and our family.  We celebrated her first Christmas in lots of ways: Kate was an angel in the church pageant a couple weeks before Christmas, she visited Santa with friends, we attended our first Christmas Eve service at St. R (especially special because two of the other babies born at St. R in the last year were there, too), J and I had our first experience putting together a toy the night before Christmas, we enjoyed Christmas dinner with one of Kate's godmothers and her family followed by Christmas dinner for the three of us at a local Chinese restaurant. After a couple days to recover from the excitement, we were off to celebrate the New Year!  Kate got a lot of practice walking in her new shoes at JE's parents' house where JE's brother and his family were also visiting.  A quick trip to Nashville to celebrate New Year's Eve with J's old friends D & E (and their wives and growing families) followed. Thankfully Kate continues to be a great traveler.

The most exciting developmental change of the month happened late in the month when Kate took her first unassisted step, moving between J and his secretary while she visited daddy for lunch for December 27th. We expected that first step to be followed by several more, but instead, she spent the remainder of her tenth month practicing that one step.  If she couldn't reach an intended target after one step, she would quickly drop to her knees and crawl the rest of the way.  She does walk especially well when holding something, pushing something, or hanging onto the fingers of someone she loves.

The most interesting thing we learned about Kate this month is demonstrated in her unwillingness to do something just because we ask for it.  Kate does things in her own way, on her own time.  We shouldn't be surprised, of course.  Our baby knew when and how to be born, and it seems she knows when and how to do everything else--in her own time.  We hope this stubborn determination will be a valuable personality trait later in life, but it seems likely to frustrate us in the short term.

Looking backward and forward

So it is customary this time of year for us to write a post looking back at the previous year and also to set some goals for the new year. Despite our lack of regular blogging this year (well, since March at least), we figured we owe this post to our future selves, at least!

First, let's look back.
We laid out our goals for 2013 in this post last January.  Basically, we accomplished half our goals for the year, which is actually on par with what we typically accomplish.  Inside, we finished the library and nursery (well, sort of...I've not done that mural I dreamed of), but the pool table is still on craigslist and in our family room..  We also didn't do anything in the living room, but we take on a few projects in our kitchen (talked about in this post; I really need to update y'all on that!).  Outside, we had our new deck built and we finished our new mailbox.  The shed is still in the way out back, and the planting beds out front are woefully neglected.
Our word for 2013 was "patience" and we think we lived that one fairly well.  First, we were very patient about letting our little girl arrive in her own time (despite our OB's best efforts to convince us otherwise).  And well, J has earned at least a thousand sainthood points due to his patience this year.  Patience is tough when you're a little sleep deprived, and our word was a good reminder to us throughout 2013 to exercise patience with each other.

Now, let's look at 2014.
Around the house, we plan to finish last year's projects and hang some family pictures (something we've not done since hanging our wedding pictures back in 2009).
Personally, J wants to make fitness a priority, and I'd like to wear shorts this year (Sounds silly, right?  I didn't wear shorts last year, and am fairly certain I didn't wear any in 2012 either.  So this goal is really about fitness and body image issues, but that's hard to say concisely).
Our word is perspective.  I had some great notes about that, but it seems Kate just deleted them while playing with my phone.  There's probably something telling in that...