It was slow out of the gate. We both vividly remember her first days and weeks - born out of the chute with a sniffle, then came the surprise stay at Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth with a urinary tract infection. Her first month seemed like two.
Then we went forward. She has been a great sleeper - and her parents couldn't be more thankful. Not a great napper, but when the sun goes down she's ready to dream and snooze the night away.
It's hard not compare her with Kole, strictly as a personal parental experience. There's really no fun in them being the same or almost the same, but comparing and contrasting their similarities and differences is a fascinating thing. When an infant has no conscious ability to choose one way or another, the DNA takes over and puts one on a vastly different path than the last.
It's hard to chart 12 months of progress, but here are some things we know to be true here at the 1-year mark:
*Her life has not been reported, in detail, on this blog. Sad to say, there is a large Been-There, Done-That factor with her, whereas with Kole everything was breaking news that needed reporting. I think it's a compliment to Karissa. Her parents are living in the moment more now than we did with her brother, where issues were Googled and researched and talked about and debated and blogged about. Now, with her, life happens and we deal with it and we keep moving on. Obviously, I should better manage my time to write things down. But, the simple fact is, it's harder to write about the exploits of a 1-year-old now because now there is a 3-year-old who needs time and energy focused on him. Free time isn't what it was three years ago.
*One bold prediction: Karissa will be tough as nails. Especially in the past six months, her doting brother plays with her the way a cat plays with a maimed mouse. Problem is, she laughs 70% of the time. She blissfully doesn't know better until at some point Kole gets too rough and then she cries - briefly. Otherwise, she takes a rugged wrestling match with her brother a few times a day.
*She crawls with surprising speed and is now taking her first steps. She is topping out at about 5 or 6 steps at a time before her beefy legs give way. Sometimes, she'll just stop while standing upright and take a slow, leisurely squat into a sitting position, as if sinking in quicksand.
*She will now mock Patty-Cake, clapping and rolling her hands then throwing them in the air - often without prompting. That's the best. When she just sits there minding her own business and you suddenly notice her clap her hands, roll them up, then throw them in the air.
*Where behind her brother in physical milestones like crawling and walking, we are finding that she is very intellectually aware much earlier than Kole, especially with TV. To this day, Kole has an extremely short attention span with TV. He knows who all the major players are - Barney, Elmo, Chicka from the Sprout network - but after 5-10 minutes he becomes bored and moves on to other things. We've convinced ourselves that's a good thing, that he needs other stimulation that TV can't provide. Karissa, however, for several months now, can be captivated by video. She can watch for several minutes at a time. With a 58-inch HD wide-screen, she has plenty to take in and it's fascinating to watch her eyes dart around the screen, taking it all in. Sometimes it's to a fault. At breakfast she sometimes gets so distracted by the TV that we have to turn it off so she'll eat. Otherwise she'll just bob her head around any obstruction and
keep watching. We're telling ourselves that she is much quicker to be engaged and interested in video, and that's a good thing.*She smiles more than she cries, her babble and gargle has a sweetness that resonates into a melody that plays in my head all day, and she is quite the cuddler when she is exhausted.
*She gets hand-me-downs left and right; both in color-neutral sleeping jammies and with toys and books and stuffed animals. And she's taking it all in stride and is the happiest baby she could be.
*She shares almost everything with her big brother, including many of the toys she does get first-hand, but has little say in how infrequent said brother has access to those toys. She now even shares a bath with her brother. The way we figure it, Kole had a couple of years of independence and it didn't do him any favors, so - the heck with it - the girl better get used to sharing. Here in a few years there will be more need and urgency for privacy from Kole.
The next few milestones will come fast and frantic: walking, talking, teeth and eating habits. We'll look forward to other things drawing her attention, like books and games. As it is, the thing that most easily draws her attention is a green lit power button on our cable box. She gets drawn to it like a moth to a light bulb, and there she'll stand turning the TV on and off and on and off.
We'll be ready for anything. The first year had many surprises and, to the detriment of the blog, we mostly had a great time just soaking it in and living it. And where I regret not having chronicled many events, even the more comical and mundane day-to-day things, most of the significant milestones have been photographed or videoed and just not posted. It's kind of like getting your second new car. The first one you drive around to show off to all your friends and the people who you want to make jealous. Then, the second one, you just more quietly and modestly appreciate, and spend more time cleaning and buffing it in the garage than showing it off around town.
Somewhere in the next few months, once the milestone is behind us when we never really knew that it passed, Karissa will be a toddler and we will never be the parents of an itty-bitty little baby again. That bums us out, but now we are more poised to know how to appreciate these coming days ahead. I may not be rushing the photos or the stories over to the computer and the blog, but know that we are devouring the moment and savoring every morsel.
