Month by Month: 12

Elizabeth actually celebrated her fourth birthday last month, but in the interest of being fair and consistent (and also because this blog gets turned into a book at the end of each year), I'm going to go ahead and post the final "month milestone" post this blog will ever see. Yes, because Elizabeth is our last, and yes, I'm sure!

We returned from our furlough a couple of weeks prior to Elizabeth's first birthday, so we celebrated at home in Ecuador. Elizabeth is the only one of our four children who celebrated her first birthday in the same country she was born in, and even the same house she came home to as a newborn! Does this mean we have finally settled after years of globe-trotting? Three years ago, I would have said, "I suppose only time will truly tell," but we are still in Ecuador three years later, so maybe the answer is yes?

Just a few days before her birthday, Elizabeth finally started crawling, and she didn't walk until about 3 months later, at 15 months. She knew a few words by her first birthday, including "more," "mama," and "bye-bye," and of course she babbled constantly.

We had a quiet little party at home with pink cupcakes and the cousins, and just enjoyed celebrating our little princess's first year of life.

One day old

One year old