This is happening. My baby. One year.
Words can't even express how much I love this little man. He is so happy that I pretty much just want to hug him all day long. He brings us such joy.
Official Stats:
Weight: 18 lbs 7 oz (9th percentile)
Height: 29 inches (20th percentile)
Head Circ: 46 cm (48th percentile)
Nine month clothes- 12 month clothes are pretty large on him. (Which made buying new clothes for family pictures hard because I couldn't stand buying him 9 month clothes, but the 12 month clothes were drowning him.)
--Lydia loves to play with him even more. Sometimes she'll ask, where's Austin? I just want to play with him.
--He started walking for real just a couple of weeks before his birthday, and by his birthday he could take 16-18 steps before falling down. Still a little unsteady but it's so cute.
--Likes to climb on things. Climbs over pillows/couch cushions on the floor, climbs up the kitchen stool, climbs on top of boxes.
--Has such a great sense of humor. He's always finding things to laugh about and tries to get the rest of us to engage and laugh with him.
--Broke through his second bottom tooth on his birthday.
--He's such a fast eater. He'll act like he's starving and
shovel his food into his mouth. He eats a lot, but eats really really fast. And then all the sudden he's done and he'll start throwing it over the edge.
--Stopped signing more and all done and just points and grunts until I give him the food he wants, or like I said, he just throws food on the ground when he's all done.
--Finally starting to sleep through the night. Like, only in the last couple of weeks and not super consistently. Many nights he still wakes up around 4:30 or 5:30. I haven't done any sleep training though because it hasn't felt right and I feel like we are doing pretty well. He goes down really great most nights. I just nurse him and lay him in his bed when he's not quite asleep but definitely sleepy and he might cry/whine for a minute but then he falls right asleep.
He's never really used a pacifier during the day just to suck on or to calm down. But we do use them when I lay him in bed at night (it seems to help him transition from nursing to sucking while he's laying in his bed) but he's stopped really using it. He'll grab it out of his mouth and just hold it. But he falls asleep just fine and I like having it there because if he gets
really worked up holding in his pacifier will help him calm down. (Especially when driving in the car.)
He loves balls. And balloons. Those are two of the only things that he really calls by name.
Bahlll.
Buh-ooooo. He's got quite the arm and can throw the ball one or two handed and loves to sit with you and roll the ball back and forth. He especially love to do this with his daddy, but he will play with me too if Daddy isn't around.
--He crawls into tight spaces and then can't get out of them. In cupboards, under chairs, etc... It's a little bit darling.
--He looooooooooves bathtime. If you say "Austin, do you want to take a bath." He'll light up, get super excited and start making his high-pitched grunting noises while taking off in the direction of the bathtub. If we are downstairs and he gets stuck at the gate, he'll shake it back and forth until you open it and he can start speed-crawling up the stairs. It we are upstairs, he'll toddle into the bathroom and stand at the edge of the tub and start pulling on his shirt and trying to lift his leg over the edge. The whole time he'll be making impatient noises like "Get this thing off of me, get me in that water!" He and Lydia bathe together and although sometimes they get in each other's way - for the most part they love it.
(Once, I just let Lydia get in the bath and didn't want Austin in because I was doing some clean up upstairs and couldn't sit and watch Austin in the tub but I was letting him stand at the edge and dip his fingers in while Lydia played and all the sudden Lydia started yelling that Austin was getting his diaper wet, so I ran in and he had climbed/fallen over the edge and was flailing around in the water. It was SO scary! I learned my lesson and will never leave him unattended by the bathwater again!)
--Like most babies, he loves to pull things out of the containers where they belong. But, the funny thing is that he almost always puts them back in where he found them. For example, he pulls all of the hand towels out of the drawer in the kitchen, then once they are all out, he puts them all back in. (Wrinkled and kerfunkled, but still back where they go.) Same with the balls from his ball bin, the tupperware from the cupboard, and almost all other messes that he makes.
--He still takes about two naps a day. One at 9 or 9:30 and the other around 2ish. But he's flexible and can miss one or the other or can adjust the times if we are out and about. I'm so grateful for such an easygoing baby!
--He will randomly lay down on the floor (espeically if there is something soft there like a blanket or pillow) and just rest there. My favorite part is that he kicks his back foot like he's just so comfortable.
--We are still breastfeeding strong. With Lydia, we hit a year and she just kind of self-weaned, but we will see how things go. I like nursing and he likes it, too. I'm so glad that we've hit a year, especially after all the stress when he was littler and I wasn't sure if he was getting enough milk. It's so much less stressful now that it's mostly just habit-nursing because he's eating real food for his actual meals. But he nurses before each nap, when he wakes up in the morning, before bed, and pretty much any other time that we feel like it.
Some more pics of this sweet boy:
Oh, little boy. We adore you. You've brought us so much joy. So, so much laughter and so, so much joy. And now you are one. A whole year old. Your personality shines through more and more each day and I am grateful that we are the ones that get to live our lives with you by our side.
Happy Birthday, little one. We love you.
