My Sweet Little Girl

I can't even get over that my sweet little girl is a year old.  We have had a blast this last year as we began getting to know her sweet little personality.

She is so sweet and cuddly willing to give lots of hugs and kisses.  Her favorite "toys" are her books and she can sit and read by herself for hours.  She gets bored easily if she isn't learning something new or engaged in something interesting.  I was amazed when my mom to entertain her began showing her the letter O on a book cover, within minutes she could find all the o's in the book.  We have started "reading" lessons with her and she learns very quickly.  She is not a pleaser, however, she can be very stubborn and is only willing to preform on her own terms.  Often she acts like she thinks she is a big girl and gives her mama a look like "what do you think I am, a baby?!?" She is not very verbal and doesn't generally babble like most babies, but (mostly) when she talks she uses words that she has learned, her favorite word of course being NO.  She also will say short sentences such as "I want __" and "I love dada".  She also likes to walk when we go to the grocery store and is happy to hold your hand and walk all over and help.  She especially likes to help with the dishwasher and the dryer.  She is a chaos out of order kind of girl and will unstack blocks, books, ect.  She systematically will remove every toy from her basket, and seems to generally like to pull things out, down, ect.  Her daily ritual every morning is to open Daddy's drawer and throw all of his underwear and socks on the floor, piece by piece!  She thinks it is very funny and will giggle to herself as she does it.  She finds most things to be very funny and is usually laughing all day.  Even if she doesn't think something is funny, she still will fake a courtesy laugh to be polite!  She isn't usually allowed to watch T.V. but sometimes she will see a computer and desperately try to get to it until someone plays a youtube clip of the Gigglebellies or the Ni hao Kylan theme song.  Then she will dance and sing along. We love her so much.  She has brought a special spirit to our family.  This last year with Chiara as part of her bedtime routine we read her the entire Book of Mormon, so she will be able to start the goal of reading it once every year! She loves the primary songs and will "sing" along with "I Love to See The Temple" at bedtime.  We are happy for her strong personality because we know it will help her to gain and defend a strong testimony of Jesus Christ.  WE LOVE YOU CHIARA!