Liam's First Birthday

Dear Liam,

Yesterday was your birthday and I can't have imagined a more perfect day. I love that it snowed all day and I was able to take you out in it and have a moment where I saw your amazement about it.  I love watching you experience everything for the first time and the sense of wonderment from it.

The whole household pitched together to not only clean but decorate and your wonderful grandparents helped pick things up for us.

So many people came to celebrate, including your uncle and his family that live out of town but braved the weather just to see you on your big day. So many friends and as much family as could come, came.  You spent the day getting loved on by everyone.

You did great with the whole party even though you only had one short nap and even participated in the opening of gifts (with only a little help form various adults).  You loved opening the paper but cried when we took your new toys away from you.

Then came your smash cake.  I had set up a corner for you to do it in and we stripped you down to your diaper and bow tie and you were so cute with the fact that you decided to just not use your hands at first and just put your face in the cake.  I think the cake might have been a little hard but you didn't seem to mind and ate probably about half of it.

Then we cleaned you up and since you got cake on your diaper we completely stripped you and then you decided to give mom a hug, and your cousin managed to capture my favorite picture from the party. I love that you give me loves.

Then we sang happy birthday, ate our cake and let you play for a bit.  The whole thing lasted around 3 and a half hours and you had such a blast.  But within half an hour of everyone leaving you fell asleep between me and your uncle. You had such a busy and long day.

I can't believe that it has already been a year. It has been the most amazing experience being you mom and I feel so lucky that I got such a happy easy kid. Yes you have your moments but you try and share and love on everyone.  I feel like you are such a sweet kid and I do miss when you were tiny and a newborn but I love knowing that you are understanding me and seeing you see the world.  Seeing how everything through your eyes is amazing.  Your father and I adore you so much and can't wait to see you grow up.

Losta Luv,
J.

Liam: 12 Months

Likes: Cuddles, crawling, eating, throwing things, 

Dislikes: Being on his back, car seat (still), getting things taken away

Biggest Achievement of the Month: Turning a year

Biggest Challenge of the Month: Eating

Sleep: So he is still a great sleeper.  He sleeps through the night 98% of the time and most of the time when he wakes up he goes right back to sleep and we don't even need to go grab him.  Getting him down can be a struggle sometimes but we have been able to just set him down in his crib awake and he will fuss for a minute or two and then will fall asleep on his own. He has been going to be between 7 and 8 and waking up between 6:30 and 7:30.

He is also napping in his crib now, which for me is amazing because now I can do things while he sleeps. He naps anywhere from an hour to 3 hours in a day which is pretty darn good.

Temperment/Personality: Getting such a personality.  I am now getting told that I am going to have so much fun when he is a toddler.  He does get upset when you take away something he isn't supposed to have still but redirection does wonders if I happen to have something good. He is still so happy and does cute things for the sake of being cute.  He will try and "share" things (aka hand it to us and expect it back within 30 seconds) and loves doing anything to make us smile. He is a major drama king though. At the drop of a hat he will start bawling with big crocodile tears and then seconds later (especially if he gets what he wants) they will be gone.

Eating: So I put this as the biggest challenge and it is mostly because he is wanting to eat normal food and is refusing purees now which makes it more difficult to make sure he is getting adequate fruits and veggies. But he is getting really good at feeding himself which I am grateful for.  We have found out that he likes hamburger (just plain patties) and chicken nuggets.  I have set up a meal plan for him (I will prep the foods ahead of time so I am not cooking all of the time) and we will start this within the next week and hopefully he will like everything we give him.  He loves having what we are having, I think it makes him feel like a big boy.  We are still breastfeeding although pumping has now stopped.  He will take whole milk (on most days) and I just breastfeed him when I am home with him.  Not sure when I am going to wean because the boy does love his boob.

The Superficial: He is still tiny for his age. Barely 20 lbs (now that we have had his 1 year appointment we know he is 19 lb 10 oz) He is getting a lot more hair (mostly in the back) but since it is really blonde it is hard to see in pictures and whatnot. His are definitely going to stay blue which I love and he gets complimented on them all the time. He is still kind of chunky but has lost a bit of it, I am sure to all the moving around he does now.

Milestones & Firsts: He likes to blow raspberries.  His new thing that he just started doing is shaking his head no.  Sometimes it is in context and sometimes it is not but he thinks it is hilarious. 

He also has started putting correct shapes in correct holes (my mom has a toy for that) and he started it completely on his own. He was trying to shove a green ball into the green circle hole and since it didn't go with that toy, it didn't work but when I gave him the right one, he did it with no problem. He doesn't have all of the shapes down yet though, he is great at the circle and decent at the square, the rest he is still working on.  Not only he is putting them in there though, he also knows that if he then hits the button it will give him the shape back so that he can do it again.

For firsts, he had his first night away from both mom and dad. Hubby surprised me with a night out of town and we had our nieces watch Liam and it went just fine.

He also had his first Thanksgiving and his last first holiday, which is a little sad.  He is growing up.... But he loved all the food at Thanksgiving and it went well, not that I remember much, I was sick and not paying too much attention to anything.

And lastly he had his first birthday obviously.  It went great and there will be a post about it soon (it is mostly written, it just need to add the pictures)


So I am not going to be doing weekly pictures anymore.  As much as I have loved them, it was a lot of work and he is not wanting to sit still for them really anymore. I will do monthly ones and still do monthly posts but I am not sure I am going to keep the format that I have now. I guess I will figure it out before his 13 month post.

Liam: Eleven Months

Likes: Eating normal food, his sippie cup, peek a boo

Dislikes: Getting changed, the car seat

Biggest Achievement of the Month: Using his sippie cup

Biggest Challenge of the Month: His health

Sleep: So this month has been on and off.  As long as he is feeling good, he sleeps great.  He normally naps around a total of 3 hours which is great if it is the afternoon nap that is the long one and if he will sleep in his crib, because then I get time to do stuff.  But he hasn't been feeling great all month. He came down with an ear infection which resulted in him needing to sleep in bed with us, which then resulted with hubby going to the couch. But that only lasted a few days and after that he went back to sleeping amazing.  The only other hitch was daylight savings time which did result in his bedtime becoming a bit earlier but he does wake up a bit earlier too so it is a good and a bad thing.  And last night he slept horribly and screamed for over an hour with hubby but I think that was just a fluke. 

Temperment/Personality: I am pretty sure that he is going to be a big ham.  He sees us smiling from something he did and so he does it again with a huge smile on his face. He is so happy but he also can turn on a dime if he doesn't get what he wants or if he sees you eating and you are not sharing. He loves seeing the people he knows and is starting to warm up to others more easily. He is interested in everything around and is understanding so much more of what we are saying.

Eating: He eats a ton. Still breastfeeding but he is eating parts of what we have for dinner and other meals if he is with us. If we go out, he gets some of what we are having or else he starts to freak out. We have still been giving him purees because we want to make sure he is eating enough but I am not sure those are enough.  On Sunday mornings he gets 2 purees, some boobie and then goes on to have eggs and whatever else we give him at breakfast. One lunch with my mom he had a yogurt, some eggs and then a fat piece of toast. I hoping to start just doing normal food because more of what he eats seems to be ending up in his mouth rather then on the floor.

I noticed after he drank over half of my roommate's smoothie that he can drink out of a straw. So I figured I would try a straw type sippie cup.  I got one and after a few days he loved it. He holds it on his own and he doesn't have to understand gravity to use it. Although he still is horrible at drinking and tends to drool it all over himself, it is not because of the cup.

The Superficial: Still small. compared to lots of other kids around his age he is tiny but he does fit into the 9-12 month clothes so he must be somewhere in the correct range. He is over 19 lbs now, almost 20 (he had to go to the doctor and they weighed him). He is still adorable although he did get a rash all over his body but after we took him to the doctor they said it would go away in a few days and it did.

Milestones & Firsts: So he can stand we have figured out, he just chooses not to, so I am sure in the next month or so he will get around to doing that. He is definitely saying mama to me now (he will say it when I walk away or when he is coming to me) so that makes it better that he said dada first.  I think he might be starting to do that with dada too but I am not 100% yet. He is waving a little bit and did it unprompted for the first time when leaving his great grandparent's house to great grandpa.  

He also started clapping.  The first time he did it, I just looked at him and asked who taught him that because I know I don't clap with him (it was his dad and our roommate) but it is adorable.  He also has started doing the raspberry noise which is fun.  I love that he is doing all these things that he sees other people do and that I don't teach him.

So he had a few firsts this month.  He got to go to his first Renaissance Faire with me and a friend and had a blast. I was shocked how well he did, I had him in his stroller almost the entire time and as long as he had his 6 items with him in it, he was happy.  And when I had to pull him out to eat in a crowded room, he sat on my lap just fine.

He had his first ear infection which wasn't fun.  We had noticed he was cranky and wasn't sleeping well and then on a Saturday I was told by my roommate that babysat him that he had a fever all morning.  I later saw him yanking at his ears later and then it clicked. We brought him into Instacare and sure enough he had an ear infection.  They said we seemed to catch it really fast and they gave us medicine and it went right away. He really only had a few bad days and the fever for only a day and a half but I still felt so bad for him.

He also had his first Halloween.  We had originally planned to stop by my parents house so they could see him in his costume and "trick or treat" at their house but once we got there, we were told by my dad that my mom was at an art meeting and wouldn't be home for awhile.  After that we were supposed to go trick or treating with my sister in law and her daughter but she ended up having to work so we didn't do that either, but it ended up being a good thing because he hated his puppy costume and only wore it for about a total of 30 minutes.  Instead we got some fast food, ice cream and went home and watched Hocus Pocus so it turned out  to be fun.