Devyn Malaya

I feel like such a neglectful mother since I haven’t posted anything about Devyn’s 1st birthday and that was over a month and a half ago now. So, to make up for it I’m going to give you a little glimpse of her.

• Devyn is extremely obstinate. When told “no” she will look at you, wrinkle her brow and then go right back to what she was doing in the first place. Sometimes she will ball up her fists and let out a very unapproving shriek before going back to whatever she wasn’t supposed to be doing in the first place. She never takes no for an answer. You always have to physically remove her from the situation. Sometimes when she gets really upset she does what DH refers to as the “angry penguin.” She stomp/waddles away while wailing to show her utter disgust. She will also do this while giggling with delight when she is really happy, so I guess it could also be called the happy pengiun too.
  
• Going right along with her obstinance is her determination. She doesn’t let anything deter her when she has her mind set on something. This has the potential to be an amazing gift throughout her life if it doesn’t drive us crazy first!
  
• When caught getting into something she knows she shouldn’t she immediately offers whatever it is to you seeming to say “here, I was only getting it for you.”
  
• She is our dancing queen! (So of course I have to sing the ABBA song to her often:) Anytime any music comes on, and it can be for literally 5 seconds on a commercial or something, she will start to shimmy her shoulders. She has been doing this for months now and it would be hilarious because you could be flipping through channels on TV and if there was music in that two seconds before the channel changed again she would start to shimmy and then look around for the source of her entertainment. She also loves to sing. She usually only sings to ballads however, fast songs are for dancing and slow songs are for singing. She has been loving all of the recent Christmas music. She will just croon way in the back seat of the car, but usually stops if you look at her, it’s adorable.


• She lights up whenever Ari enters the room. An enormous grin will spread across her face and she’ll look at me like “is it really her mom?” She loves her big sister and definitely lets it show.


• She loves Dante, loves to terrorize him, but is also just a tiny bit afraid of him when he’s walking toward her. Like she does with Ari, only not quite so much, she smiles whenever he enters a room. She loves to pet him, although usually it’s more like pounding on him. He always just looks away seeming to say “if I don’t look at her maybe she will go away.” But, when faced with an oncoming Dante in the narrow hallway she sometimes gets a look of “what do I do now” on her face and tries to head in any other direction so as not to get knocked down, which she often is by him.


• All things worth eating must stick to her finger! Every time we put some type of new food on her high chair tray she must try poking it with her finger to see if it will stick. She will usually try with one type of food a few different times before she gives up and just continues to eat picking it up. She will again try again the next time she has said food, just in case it’s sticking properties have changed in the last week or two. This all started when we had some gnocchi. When going to pick up a piece it ended up sticking to her finger and from then on she was hooked. She finished the evening eating only what would stick to her finger and has continued this tradition of trying ever since.


• She loves to share! She will even share her bottle or food from her mouth, which is saying something since she is a very food driven child.

Here are a few of her more recent accomplishments (the videos are really dark, but you get the picture):

folding her arms...

and blowing kisses.

And of course the obligatory pictures :) I made this cake to match the caterpillar she got (see in the above picture). We call this the "snow bunny" outfit.