One Year Older and Wiser Too

I don't want to forget everything that's happened over the past two weeks, so I'm turning once more to my old blog to preserve these memories.
My little baby isn't so much of a little baby anymore; she's turning into a little girl by leaps and bounds.
I've had the privilege of staying home with her for the past two weeks for Christmas Break. It's felt more like a month because of all of the milestones she's met. She started December with three teeth. She's finishing with five, and three more about to break through at any moment. She started December army crawling, she finished it doing a proper correct crawl as well as pulling herself up on anything and everything she could get her hands on. She started December unable to go from prone to sitting. She now moves back and for between the two effortlessly, often carrying her toys. She started December showing no interest in age appropriate toys and games. She still doesn't stack, and she prefers to dump instead of pile, but she CAN put toys into her cookie jar and regularly plays with her "babies" and toy animals. She started December needing to be rocked to sleep. She now goes down for a nap on her own after about five minutes of playing in her crib. She started December unable to communicate beyond a few simple words. She now regularly says "bye bye," signs "all done," and regularly says "yeah." She started December eating primarily baby food and purees. She now eats mostly what the family is eating, reserving her purees to help her get "stuffed" if she wasn't able to feed herself enough of what we ate during our meal time. She started December unable to feed herself anything other than big strings of food. She now effortlessly picks up tiny pieces of food and eats them as fast as she can get her chubby little pinscher grasp into her mouth.
Yup. She's growing up by leaps and bounds. So much growth in so little time. It makes me wonder sometimes how she'd do if she were home all day with me every day, but then again I think of all the lives I can touch as a teacher, and how good I feel getting out a few days a week to do something of my own, and I think that the example I'm setting for her will help her out greatly as she grows as well. All in all, I think we're meeting a good balance (finally) of mommy time, wife time, and me time. Cheers to the New Year. Let's hope that 2015 is just as full of joy and magic as 2014 was.