And here we are. You were born a year ago today. I of course had no idea of the ride I was in for but I’ve enjoyed it, my sweet, silly, beautiful boy.
Your early intervention teacher thinks you will walk in the next 30 days. Even though you motor around perfectly well on all fours, you regularly pull up and want to take off on your feet. You like having the ability to do laps back and forth–you don’t want to be confined anywhere for too long. You also don’t want to be held for long either. You want to be down on the floor to explore your surroundings.
Your favorite toys include wooden shapes that fit into a puzzle, your light-up remote control (still), and your Leap Frog music table. You’re quite good about entertaining yourself for a while with each of those–again, assuming that you have the ability to crawl back and forth between the living room and dining room whenever you want.
You are now able to drink water out of a plastic water bottle. You looove water. We’re still working toward a sippy cup so we can get away from your baby bottles soon, but you seem to prefer being able to A) hold the bottle yourself and B) drink some and dump some down your chest. You occasionally get a little bit of watered-down juice at Mrs. D’s house but not at home yet. Mommy isn’t happy about the amount of sugar in nearly all juices and doesn’t think it adds any nutritional value anyway.
Your appetite is huge and you’re eating a wide variety of healthy stuff. You chew now–whether you need to or not (though you still have no teeth)–so you get food that’s less pureed and has more texture. You really like orzo, for example. We’ve been lucky to be able to use fresh ingredients out of your aunt and uncle’s garden, like squash, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, sage, and rosemary.
Don’t worry–okra is soon!
My new favorite thing is to try to make you laugh. No, not the short little laugh that you’ve been doing since about 6 months. The belly laugh. It makes other people laugh until they cry. Previously only a few of us had seen it on a semi-regular basis, but when we met with the early intervention people, that’s all you did for the first 15-20 minutes. They declared that they’d never seen anyone as young as you laugh that hard–they were worried you were going to hurt yourself!
You sleep for eleven hours at night, like clockwork. When you first wake up, you sing and talk to yourself for a few minutes, then locate your pacifier and start your seahorse that plays a bunch of different pieces of classical music. After that, you crawl over to the end of your crib, pull yourself up, and start banging on your changing table. This cycle may repeat itself unless I come in to get you. We change your diaper and then settle in the glider together to nurse for a while. Sometimes you only want to for ten minutes and other times you’re content to stay there for half an hour. But inevitably you’ll get more interested in what the puppy is up to or looking at the light fixture, or you just want down.
People who meet you no longer assume you were born early. You’re long and lean, as we all expected, but you don’t appear undersized. I won’t get your official stats until next week, but I think you’re 28.5″ tall and 20 lbs. You’re heavy enough that if I don’t have you positioned juuuust right in your sling or wrap, it hurts my back in less time than it used to. I still prefer to wear you as much as possible when we go out, as opposed to putting you in a stroller or a shopping cart. The easier to steal kisses, my dear!
Though you haven’t said words, you like to make noises. “Dadadada” and “babababa” are the usual go-to vocalizations. You also click your tongue, roll your tongue (you’ve done that when fussy for almost your whole life), and blow through your lips or just smack them. You sometimes make the Baby Sign for “cereal” while eating and “milk” while nursing, so I know you’re putting things together.
I love watching you observe the world. You’re learning things all the time and it’s fun to see you figuring out how things work, whether they make noise, what they taste like, and what happens when you drop them.
I love you so much. I’m so proud of you. I’ve loved this first year and am excited about all the years to come. Happy birthday, baby.
