Well, we've made it through the first year, and it's been a really good one. Olive has transformed herself from a sleepy little grub into a stompy toddler of over four times her birth mass. She's a kid who's much happier eating whatever the grownups are having than any kind of safe and bland mush, who'd rather spend weeks teaching herself how to walk forward down the stairs than to reverse down them even once. She's a cuddly little girl who just steals your heart in her affection. She's an independent child whose biggest tantrums come when she's frustrated at all the things she hasn't yet learned how to do.

She's so much bigger than she used to be. She's so much smaller than she's going to be. She's growing new capabilities all the time. She's only 5% of the way toward adulthood.

Olive is a girl who, in the heat and the humidity of this summer, has come to love taking baths: they're playful and cooling. She's a girl who spends most of her time in the bathtub on her feet despite the increased risk of slipping, because it's easier to catch herself if she starts her fall from higher. She's ambitious, and it's wonderful.

Six months ago, I wrote about some objectives we hoped she'd achieve by now. She's met and exceeded each of them with the exception of the baby signs, which quite frankly is because Christina and I never actually learned them ourselves.

In just one year, Olive has dramatically rearranged our family dynamics. Babies aren't easy, but she's been a really good baby for us. It's no really appropriate to call her a baby anymore though: she begins her second year as a toddler. She's no longer the passive observer that she was as a newborn; she interacts with the world, tastes everything, and makes it her own.

I can't wait to see what the next year brings.