You've Come A Long Way, Baby

Finally, Juliana's birthday post! Only five days late. I'm actually kind of proud of myself for being less than a week overdue with this. Small victories, right?

We Giddenses feel pretty lucky to have this little lady in our family. She came into the world two weeks early, so she's gone from looking like this:

to looking like this:

Most of us agree, she didn't look a thing like she does now when she was born. More so than Everett's did, her looks have really changed over the course of the last year. She has eight teeth and golden-colored hair. That's the best way to describe her hair color. It's not exactly blonde, it not exactly brown, it's just kind of...golden. Her eyes are currently a hazel-ish color, but they could be turning brown. It's really hard to tell. She crawls everywhere and cruises like a champ, but she's yet to take those first few steps into the walking world. Everett walked a week after his 1st birthday, so I'm waiting to see if Juliana follows suit. She's totally off the bottle - just decided she didn't like it anymore, so that's a relief for me. I tell you what, I can wean them off bottles like nobody's business but when it comes to pacifiers, I'm a total dunce.


In general, Juliana seems much more dramatic than Everett was at her age. I haven't decided if it's due to gender or personality. Case in point: We had her birthday "celebration" yesterday (it was just a cupcake). When Everett turned one he sat there calmly as we sang Happy Birthday and then promptly dug in with both hands. Here's Juliana as we were singing:

It's difficult to tell if all the thrashing about was due to the quality of singing or just being scared and dramatic. Nevertheless, she eventually settled down enough to eat her cupcake. I mean, eat the chocolate frosting. She didn't really touch the cake part of the cupcake. Which could have been a good thing since it was a beast getting all that chocolate frosting off her face and out of her nose and hair.

Probably my favorite picture of the day:

The end product of letting Juliana take control of her own cupcake eating?

For comparison's sake, here's Everett after he finished eating his cupcake on his first birthday:

Yep, Juliana's just more dramatic. In every way.

In other blogworthy ramblings, did any of you catch the premiere of "Privileged" on the CW? I stumbled upon it just as it was starting last Tuesday night and I think I'm hooked. It's fun and quirky and fashionably forward for sure. The lead is played by a girl that was on "Reba", if any of you ever saw that show (anyone? anyone?) and one of the girls played Effie in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2". "Privileged" kinda/sorta has the same vibe as "Gilmore Girls", where you have to be paying attention to catch all the fun things they say. As I currently watch only two shows faithfully ("The Office" and "Ugly Betty"), I think my tv-watching schedule can handle this fun little ditty every Tuesday night. If you didn't catch it last week, definitely try to scope it out tomorrow night. It comes on after the new 90210, which I've heard is abysmal and in no way reflects on the quality of this particular show. Check it out and let me know what you think.