A year gone by...

Jovie's a year old. We've had so much fun with her this past year. The wonderful day she was born I ate an enormous piece of cake throughout the night. The weeks to follow were a little rough. For the first 6 weeks of her life she thought that between 1 am and 5am was the perfect time to be awake and cry. I remember walking out in the family room, sitting on the exercise ball bouncing, pacing the creaky bedroom floors, yeah, that was rough. Then we moved on to constantly spitting up. I changed my clothes at least 2 or 3 times a day. Jovie's were changed even more than that. But then came her adorable smile with those chubby cheeks that nobody could resist. Her cheeks caught eyes a mile away. Her big blue eyes seem to grow bigger and bluer by the day. Since she was a couple of months old, she loved to talk. She is so noisy! Usually a good noisy. She is constantly chiming in her two cents. She's not quite as noisy as she used to be, now she usually nods her head with an "eh" and that means something however I don't always know what. Food. Jovie LOVES food. She always has and probably always will. If you want to make her happy, just lead her to the food. Jovie is adventurous and enjoys trying to be just as big as her big sister. She loves to go down her slide, climb up and down stairs and would probably jump off the couch if she could figure out how to jump. She dances like nobody else and I will often look in the rear-view mirror in the van and see a carseat rocking side by side as Jovie is wrapped up in the beat of the music.

What a joy and a blessing our little Jovie is.

"...Happy Birthday to you!"

"Oh, don't touch it!"

"Ouch. Are you okay?" (Yes, she put it out with her fingers.)

Yum! Now this is a birthday.

Not too messy.

Hugging her new baby doll from Mammy, Pappy and kids.