Happy Birthday sweet baby boy! This past month we have seen some major changes with you. You have become such a happy little guy. You are exploring anything and everything and your little personality has made an appearance in a big way.
Here are a few things about you at one year old...
- You are doing much better with your eating. You will eat most baby foods and are really starting to enjoy solids such as bananas, graham crakers, pears and cheerios. You do not seem to like cheese. You still have a little problem with pocketing the food onto the roof or sides of your mouth, but you are getting better. I think you just need some more practice. You are also doing pretty good with a straw cup. The OT advised against a sippy cup for you so we are going straight to the straw. You are still figuring it out, but have done it a few times on your own.
- You are crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything. You love to be standing up and in the action at all times. You will crawl around the furniture if you have a motivator (the remote or one of Charlie's toys) but otherwise you are not doing it consistently. You love to climb the stairs and hang out by the fireplace.
- You have beautiful, bold blue eyes and your hair is lightening up to a reddish light brown color. It looks very red in the sunshine. I love it.
- You are still an earlybird, usually waking by 6am. You usually take a pretty decent nap in the morning and then a short nap in the afternoon. You wake up grumpy from your naps and usually need some extra attention to snap out of it. Bedtime is around 7:30pm.
- You are wearing 18 month clothes and size 4 diapers. You weighed 20 pounds 2 ounces and were 27.75 inches long at your one year appointment today. (10th percentile for both)
- You are throwing little temper tantrums when you can't have what you want or when I take something away from you. How do you find every little tiny of anything in the carpet and why do you have to put it in your mouth?
- You are become much more interactive with us. You love it when we sing to you. We have been singing a lot of Patty-Cake, Twinkle-twinkle, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. You are just learning how to clap. It is so fun to see your reactions to the things around you. We can definitely see that little person inside of you is starting to shine through
- You started randomly shaking your head from side to side about 2 weeks ago. Now if we do it, you will do it to. It is the funniest thing.
- You like to imitate the noises we make. From high pitched squeals to whispers, you will usually imitate any sounds you hear. We have not heard any first words from you yet though.
- You are seeing Amy, your OT, once a week to be sure you stay on track and continue to work on the small feeding issues that you have. You finally like Amy and you have fun showing her all your new tricks every week.
- You are still not really into watching anything like Baby Einstein. If it is on, it will occasionally catch your attention for a few seconds, but then you are on to your next activity.
- You love to take baths, especially with your big brother. You just splash and splash like crazy.
- You have 6 teeth and at least one on the way. Your cheeks get bright red when you are teething and you are constantly drooling and chewing on everything. Your appetite usually decreases as well.
- You have gotten pretty social and will usually crack a smile at any stranger that tries to get your attention. Everybody always comments on how beautiful you are. I have to agree with them every time.
His party is not until Sunday so I will share some pictures of that soon. He did have his one year check-up today and had to get his shots. I know, what a mean mama I am to make him get shots on his birthday! The doctor said he looked great. His right testicle still has not descended, so we will have to see a urologist about that. More than likely he will have to have a small surgery performed to have get that fixed. Bummer, I was really hoping that would take care of itself over time. Luckily, it should be a short and minor procedure.
We had a special birthday lunch at Taco Bell.
This is his face when he is squealing.....I love that you can see all his teeth in there.
It is just about impossible to get a decent picture of these 2 together.
Some pictures from this afteroon. He was much too busy to give me a smile. Don't you just love those cute, chubby little hands?
And of course the rock goes right in to the mouth just like everything else. Yum!
He is getting excited for his party, I can tell! :)
Once we started putting the costume together, we made the decision that we weren't going to get too particular on the details. We all knew that nobody was going to recognize him as Rafiki anyway, so we weren't going to get called out on missing something, right? After we got all the pieces on him I have to admit that it came together better than I was expecting.
He was a very happy and proud Rafiki.
Singing the "Circle of Life".
We almost forgot to take pictures of Cannon the Monkey. Typical second child! This was Charlie's halloween costume when he was almost 2 years old. It is perfect for a baby, warm and comfy for a chilly night. He just tagged along with the rest of us soaking it all in. He wouldn't crack a smile to anybody all night.
Charlie was done holding his staff after the second house, so I was delegated that job. He was a lot more scared of the decorations this year and insisted that I walk up to the door with him at almost every house. He would not even consider going to a house that he thought may have a dog or cat. Absolutely out of the question! He just took his time and was ready to quit after about 20 houses. Even with all the candy, his very favorite score was a little flashlight that our neighbor Ben gave him.
Pretty much everybody thought he was Indian and a few even called him a witch doctor. Nobody guessed Rafiki from the Lion King on Broadway, can you believe it? :) He did get lots of great comments though. Despite not knowing who he was, everybody loved the costume. Even other kids were saying how cool it was. So I guess just maybe it was worth all the time and hassle!
It was a great evening. So happy to fulfill my little guy's halloween dreams. 
