13 1/2 month update....

Since we don’t do the monthly George shots and updates I just thought I’d give everyone a quick, update on Max these days!

He’s walking all over the place. It took longer than I thought between his first steps and him actually walking up a storm but this past week he’s finally mastered it and is officially upright most of the time. He has quite a vocabulary…. Includes book, ball, balloon, box, button, bus, mama, dada, woof, hot and probably more I’m forgetting. He knows what a doggy says, what a duck says and what a sheep says (and manatee, assuming Nate is making an appropriate manatee sound for him to imitate….). He is very particular about placing and organizing things (NO idea where he gets that fromJ). The best part of what he does now is he pretends and teases. He’ll pretend to hand you something and take it back. And he’ll pretend to be eating off an empty plate or tray or even off my hand the other day. He has such a HUGE imagination, its just amazing to watch him play sometimes.
One of his other favorite things to do find belly buttons, which we didn’t realize was an issue till his little friend came over Friday night and the first thing he does is walk up to her and lift her shirt up…..something to work on….
And of course his all time favorite thing to do is dance!!! Who can blame him!

BUT…. our biggest hurdle now is that the poor thing still only has 2 teeth. We think he’s been teething pretty hard the last week but I still haven’t seen anything come through. I’m afraid he may get 10 at a time (which would put him up to about where he should be!). So hopefully they’ll come in soon and be over with.
He is still taking 2 good naps. It kinda messes up a day but its nice for me because I get to do chores during the am nap and then sleep with him during the pm nap (seem to need lots of extra sleep these days). And we’re almost done with the bottle, he gets about 3oz first thing in the am which I keep cutting back so my goal is to not take bottles to FL at the end of January. He’s eating ok. He’s kinda picky but he doesn’t like to eat the same things all the time which makes my head hurt trying to think of things to feed him. And he’ll also LOVE something one day and hate it the next so its hard to keep up. But he’s mostly off of baby food now so that’s nice.

So now we’re just getting ready for the holidays, which I’m looking forward to because I get to eat all my holiday meals with maternity pants on, lots of extra room!!!

Our big news...

Well, since you've all been asking!!! You're kid turns one and suddenly everyone wants to know when the next one is coming. But we're very excited. We wanted them close so this will be about 20 months. We're due in June so I have a long way to go....So far everything is good. I feel awful, tired and sick but a little different than I did with Max. I'm still trying not to get my hopes up too high for a girl.... just as long as the baby is healthy! Max needs to share some of his attention anyway:)

Max's first hair cut

So it was time.... the hair was out of control and my hair dresser offered so I took her up on it. He wasn't such a huge fan. He liked the big chair and the cool drape but once the scissors came out he ended up on my lap and I had to hold his hands down so she could just get a quick cut in. All I wanted was the ears and front trimmed so it was a success.

For those who thought it was awful to cut his hair already, here is a good before shot:

before scissors:

starting to wonder what is going on....

and the after shot, MUCH better!!!

This just cracks us up when he does this, can't get any closer to your toys huh.... (and yes, he's holding a lolly pop but he didn't know it was candy... of all the things he puts in his mouth, he never tried with this!!)

Halloween

For whatever reason Harrisburg does trick or treat on Thursday so tonight was the night. I was so anxious to post these pics because, while I hate to be one of those moms, I have never ever seen anything even half this cute in my entire life! We practiced our "roar" all day but of course he doesn't perform on command. He made out really well, got mom and dad some good candy and even scored himself a toy and a box of ginger snaps (his favorite!).

Our little dragon:

Last weekend we went to an orchard/pumpkin place. They had animals and an inside play area for kids. Luckily the rain let up while we were there. Max seemed to enjoy himself!

Little side note: We did finally have our first by our self steps this week, its slow right now but I know once he gets the hang of it he'll be running all over the place!

Another soggy weekend....

Last weekend we had a trip planned to my Richmond aunt and uncle's river house (York River) house with them and my cousins and their kids. Unfortunately at the last minute Nate got sick so he wasn't able to come but my mom, Max and I still headed down in the rain. Max did good during the long car ride. He took two naps each way and both times we stopped for lunch (first at Ikea and on the way back at the Potomac Mills outlet mall) where we could eat and let Max push his stroller around. Its hard since he's not walking yet, he has to get his energy out some how but we can't let him crawl around anywhere so he had a great time pushing his stroller all over the place and thinking he was pretty cool doing it. Although it was cold and rainy the entire time (no boat or any outdoor fun) we did have a nice visit with everyone. The first night Max had a really bad sleep and ended up in bed with me (for the first time in almost a year) and let me tell you, I have no idea how people co-sleep with their kids. Both of us move around way too much, neither of us were comfortable but at least he was warm which was my goal. But other than being kinda tired, we had a great visit and Max was HIGHLY entertained by my cousins' awesome kids!

Laura's wedding

Yay for our beautiful bride (and the awesome dresses she let us wear!!!)

Max's real birthday!

He's a whole year old!!!

Since we were heading out of town for Laura's wedding, we just had a small pizza lunch with the Grandmas and of course, more cake! He did get quite a sugar high this time but it didn't last too long.

Sadly, on his first birthday we had to leave him overnight for the first time. I'm not sure who it was hardest on but we all survived. My dear friend Laura got married and I was in the wedding and it was so nice, we had a great time even though we missed our boy terribly. My mom just stayed at our house with him. We left Friday afternoon for rehearsal and dinner, and then since it was a morning wedding, we did get home late in the evening Saturday. He was quite happy to see us (and though my mom said he was very good for her, I'm sure she was glad to get home and relax too!).

So my baby is a whole year old....sometimes it seems like it went SO fast, but other times I can hardly remember life before Max. We all survived a whole year with little injury! Poor Max got that RSV virus when he was 4 months, Nate drilled a bit through his thumb baby proofing the kitchen and I had some tendinitis in my wrist from holding Max until he would actually rest on my hip but all in all, that's not too bad!

The only thing I think I miss is relaxing.... like not feeling like there is ALWAYS something I should be doing. But we just have the best little boy ever. I could never get tired of hanging out with him because he always makes you laugh. I think I also miss my living room sometimes! But I can honestly say we put to very good use EVERYTHING we had: bouncer, swing, jumper, walker, play mat, tummy mat, pac-n-play and now our riding toys! Some day he'll be big enough to play on his own in his room and we'll get our house back but for now, we make do and are thankful for a big living room!

I'm also proud to say I had exactly enough frozen breast milk that Max got some every day for the entire first year of his life (even though he stopped nursing in the 10th month). It was totally worth it! I was also lucky that Max transitioned very nicely to formula supplements and we only started on his first B-day, but he seems to like milk pretty well too.

What I also think played a huge role in his first year is the video monitor. It seems crazy but I can't tell you how many hours I've spent watching it. From all the sleep/nap transitions to know if he was asleep or settled or if it was worth getting up and going in.... to honestly spending a total of hours over this first year just watching him sleep on it. We lay in bed at night and watch him and talk about all the cute and funny things he did that day and still just can't believe how we got so lucky.

So for the last month.... we're going into year one with still only 2 teeth! But he has finally taken to real food the the last few weeks. I guess I should say its been really nice but now we're kinda in an awkward stage of trying to figure out what he likes, still getting some baby food of course but some days he wants to eat like a big boy and I'm pretty particular that he still gets lots of fruits and veggies so some meals tend to be a struggle but he's doing pretty well over all, especially since he's doing it all on 2 teeth! He's still not walking. He's standing and walking assisted all the time but hasn't really shown any interest yet. I think once he starts he'll take off. Everyone says how hard it is but honestly, he crawls everywhere now, and pretty fast so I really don't think it will be too different. Just more boo boos for mom to kiss probably! He talks a lot. He has his vocab (mama, dada, ball, baseball, football, book, bus, woof...) but he'll also repeat words you say so even though he's not using them regularly, he does say a lot in any given day. Still sleeping about 11 hours and taking two good naps. We went to the Dr's and he's 20.9oz and 29 inches long, which is a bit on the smaller side but we weren't expecting to raise a basketball player! I'd rather have them small than large!

Never too young right???