Stella turns one!

Stella turned one on May 13th. I don't think any year has ever passed this fast! The actual birthday was quite quiet with cake and a quick round of Happy Birthday to celebrate. On the 14th we had a party with nearly 40 adults and about 15 children. It was crazy but Stella loved it. In fact Tim and I hardly saw her all evening as she crawled around following her friends.

A very exciting development over the past couple of weeks has been Stella's increasing vocabulary. She can now say "teeth" while pointing to her teeth, "moo" when asked what cows do, "brown bear" at the sight of any book (Brown Bear is her favourite) and the latest is "hi" whenever she or anyone else enters a room.

Presents the American way.....

The morning after Stella's party, we were a bit overwhelmed by the generosity of our party guests... No shortage of toys in this house anymore

Reading on her bed

Stella will often take herself off to the bedroom and spends hours leafing happily through her books.

Still enjoying the sling

At 26lbs she's getting quite heavy but Stella still loves being in the sling and for short journeys I can still just about manage it!

Learning to walk

Stella is an independent soul. She's now a super fast crawler and an expert cruiser and is learning to walk with the help of anything that moves, furniture wise that is. She doesn't seem to trust her parents not to let go, so she'll only walk with a solid inanimate object to cling onto.

We've also made big progress on the sleep front in the past couple of weeks and for the last few nights she's slept all the way through the night. Well, until at least 5.30am, which strangely enough we now consider to be morning..... Tonight we erected some black-out curtains in the bedroom so we're hoping for more of a lie in tomorrow. Let's see.