Kelley's first year flew by, at least for me. She's come a long way, and it's been a happy journey.

We celebrated with only four of us. Kelley didn't much care for her cake, but she liked her hot dogs. We still need to work on opening presents, expect to have that mastered by her next birthday.

My mom stayed with us for the past week or so and noticed that Kelley makes a particular sound, which we heard only as a baby noise, when she's interested in Nimitz. It's testable and verified: it's Baby's vocalization of a cat purring!

When Kelley sees Nimitz and heads toward him to play with him, or when Nimitz comes near her, she'll make the purr sound, which comes out more or less discernable enough that the connection's quite clear. Kelley's also blowing kisses and saying bye-bye as well as "mmmmm" when we she eats. It's all terribly cute.

Someone gave us one of those five-year-handprint kits and we used canister #1 from that. Kelley grabbed the plaster, though, so we have more of a gouge than a print, but we decided to leave it as made for its humour value rather than tap it smooth and try again.



Kelley's pile o' presents!




And a yummy cake just like grandma made for mommy!




Baby's year-one handprint.