One Year Old

Will is one! Our little birthday boy enjoyed celebrated his first journey around the sun with what else? Lots of cake and ice cream.

On his real birthday, May 16th, we took him to the zoo at point defiance, and while he was a little under whelmed by the animals (he’s one, a huge elephant just standing off in the distance is about as exciting as a huge rock off in the distance), he quite enjoyed an ice cream bar on the way out. After falling asleep in the car on the way home, he was pleasantly surprised with some gifts; some balls and a Big Bird toy, and he particularly liked the balls. Then he ate mass quantities of cake, followed by getting tossed fully clothed into the bathtub.

And since we like birthdays so much, we celebrated again this weekend with all of our family. Will got more presents, of course, and ate lots of cake again (of course). The highlight for everyone was Will diving into the cake while it was still on the table and shoveling it into his mouth. Hey, he knows what to do with cake.

It was a lot of fun to see our little Will so grown up, toddling around and enjoying his birthday, he’s really such a big, big kid now, it’s hard to imagine all the changes he has gone through this year.

But with everything he’s learned, I’m finally starting to remember what I love about toddlers (and that’s lucky since I hopefully won’t mind too much that he’s not a delicious little baby anymore). Don’t get me wrong, and if you’ve read this journal you know how much I have loved Will as a baby. Falling asleep in my arms, the sweet first smiles, crawling, little chubby cheeks, you get the idea… But now that he’s one, I feel like we’ve returned to some form of our former lives. Lives where we can order Will food in a restaurant, or even actually enjoy an evening without juggling a baby at the computer. (knock on wood, but the last few nights Will has actually been falling asleep at a regular time and staying asleep alone, well alone in our bed until we get there, but still)

Which leads me to Will’s other recent milestone: He ordered off a menu for himself! Well, you know, someone else did the ordering, but Will ate a kid’s entrée himself. No sharing off mom and dad’s plate, thank you very much, he’ll have the chicken strips and a side of fries. And he ate the whole thing. You might ask, do we feed the kid anything other than fried food and sugar? Well, yes we do usually, but hey, you only turn one once, right?

Also after a year, Will’s more or less weaned. It’s been sort of hard, even though it was very gradual, the last few months he’s only been nursing at night, he’s gone through some withdrawal, but overall it’s been good. It was an enjoyable experience for both of us, and I’m sad that era is over, but again, I am able to return to being a normal person with a little personal space. Well, not that I really get much personal space, he’s still quite fond of me, but it’s a little reprieve.

Not that I’m complaining, I’ll still take all the Will snuggles and Baby Kisses I can get.

Alright Alright Alright!

I could explain my lack of writing with my schedule lately, or on the fact that we’ve had such nice weather, it’s hard to stay inside to update a blog, or that we live so close to family now, who needs a blog anyway? Right? Well, this has become like my pile of clean laundry, piled so high that, my god, who wants to actually fold all that now? The weeks have gone by with no update, but I don’t have a good excuse, really, just that two weeks went by, then three, and now Will’s two days away from turning one and I have no silly stories or anecdotes to look back on from the last weeks of his babyhood.

So here are the cliff notes:

Will’s most favorite things to do:

Unplug the lights on either side of the fireplace (before a parent-type person snatches the plug and hides it).

Turn off the TV while Emily is watching a movie.

Eat.

Look at books and / or tear pages from books.

“Help” grandpa and dad (we’ve been doing a lot of painting, well not we, they’ve been doing a lot of painting, I try to stay the heck out of the way).

Being outside.

Eating some more.

Playing in the dirt and / or water, and putting them together, mud.

Drinking out of his sippy cup.

Did I mention eating?

Will has yet to find a food he really dislikes. He’s even gobbled down pickles and will eat even tomatoes and anything meaty or starchy. I think his favorite food is bananas, which he eats for breakfast. And what I mean by that is he eats bananas, plural, for breakfast. He gobbles down one banana and will usually chase it down with half of another, followed by maybe some toast or a bagel and cream cheese and a few hearty swigs of milk from his cup.

But if you saw him, you’d understand that he burns all that off in probably a few hours. He’s incredibly busy these days, walking a few steps between cruising around the furniture, climbing, tearing things apart as fast as possible. Now that I’ve started working, Ian has come to understand on a very primal level that when you’re home with the kids, it’s near impossible to do anything else! Quick, go tell the other men. However on the positive side, Ian has also been successful in getting Will to nap during the day without me, which is quite a landmark. And I don’t want to jinx this, but lately, Will has been falling asleep at night without nursing. The last few months, as Will had shown no interest in weaning (Emily pretty much self weaned at 11 months and never looked back), I had begun to worry about nursing a toddler, something I don’t see anything wrong with, but personally couldn’t do (my god, at some point, you just want your body back)

Will’s also communicating like a real person now. Added to his repertoire of words: Uh-oh, ba-ba (bye-bye), and he also shakes his head no and yes, usually in response to something he knows he shouldn’t be doing, like yesterday he crawled over to the broom, which was leaned up against the wall, and shook his head no, telling me he knew he shouldn’t touch it. But then he went ahead and grabbed it anyway. Will also shows sympathy and affection by rocking and patting his baby doll, or patting Emily and his dad on the head. He will also, and this is just about the cutest thing ever, give “baby kisses” if you ask him. He’ll plant a big open mouth kiss right on your cheek. He also blows raspberries, especially on me. He brushes his hair with a hairbrush and just now I was outside cleaning (well, hosing) off his high chair and he was scrubbing the tray with a sponge. Such a big, big boy!

Part of me forgets how old he really is, I think in my mind he’s still between 6 and 9 months old, so some of this behavior really catches me off guard. But here we are, two days away from Will’s birthday. And wow, it seems like only yesterday I was in tears as Ian and I drove to Moscow to walk in the mall, I was exhausted from false labor, and stressed thinking this baby would never be born!

But he was, I went to the hospital on May 16th with the same irregular contractions that had been going on for weeks, but by golly I was having a baby that day, and no one was going to tell me otherwise. Will arrived (again arrived is a huge omission of details I won’t go into here, see the first post) later that night at 10:28pm. Today he’s no longer our little serious mister, or our little squeaker that he was in those first few days. But he’s become a tumbling, rascal of a little boy much, much too quickly. But at least I can look back and know that not a moment was wasted, I can read the early days of this journal and know that I savored this little guy and clung onto his babyhood with two hands. Now, it’s time to enjoy Will’s toddlerhood, and I will, and I promise to remain only the tiniest bit nostalgic for the little bundle we brought home a year ago.