Adventures in Parenting: ONE YEAR!!!!

HOLY CRAP.  We survived.  We kept a small human alive for TWELVE MONTHS.

Not only that, but I'm relatively sure that we haven't physically or emotionally damaged him (yet).

This kiddo, all 23.5 pounds of him, is 90% of the time a happy, smiley, laughing little goober, who loves to cruise around furniture, crawl all over the house, and laugh mischievously when he manages to get into something he's not supposed to have (and then cry when we take it away).

90% of the time, he can sleep through the night.

90% of the time, he can eat whatever table food we're eating.

Noodle dishes are his fave.

NEW STUFF:
Blowing raspberries.  It's hilarious.  And he does it A LOT, because we laugh.  We try to discourage it at meal time so he's not blowing food at us, but just about any other time, it just makes me giggle.

New Car Seats:  We donated his infant carrier to a friend who's due in November, so we had to bust out the big boy car seats.  We were given one for the Hub's car (Safety 1st Complete Air), and bought one for my car (Graco MySize 65).  Personally, I like mine WAY better.  The Safety 1st is pretty basic, and doesn't recline for rear-facing--so if your seats aren't angled well, you have to use a rolled up towel under the base to get it to recline enough. It's also super-tall, so in a recline, you have to keep the seat in front of it scooted WAY forward to fit (and that's in a Jeep Cherokee).  The Graco also features a "rapid remove" cover for easy cleaning...which would have been really handy when Lil' Man projectile vomited all over the Safety 1st seat last week (which does NOT have a "rapid remove" ANYTHING and took about 15 minutes to disassemble to get the cover off of for cleaning).

Shoes:
When he moves into the 1 Year Room at day care, they start going outside for play, and to the gym, so they have to have shoes.  We NEVER bothered with shoes before that (I could say it was because we wanted his feet to develop properly, yada yada, but it's really because I'm lazy.  He barely keeps socks on--why bother with shoes?)  Thankfully, a friend loaned us a huge bag of shoes so now he has quite the assortment.

So matchy-matchy!

1st Birthday Party:
This of course means we survived planning and executing our first kid's birthday party!  Our friend B had her daughter the same day as us, so we decided it might be fun to have a dual party for them.  B found an indoor play place that would be able to keep the kiddos entertained, and her sister made cakes for both kids (and cupcakes for the adults and guests).  No big blowout event--the little ones loved the Under 18 Month play area, and the older kids loved the bigger play equipment.  

The birthday babes.

And I managed to NOT go Pinterest crazy:  Only bought him a special onesie, and made the banner for his high chair.  

(Used a blank banner from Hobby Lobby, and then just printed out the ball and letters on regular paper.  Got a bag of mixed ribbon and tied to the banner for extra "pop". Used double-sided tape to adhere to the high chair...with mixed results.)

Everything went pretty well--aside from both kids being kind of scared of their giant cakes.

"You're saying...this whole thing is for ME?"

Too. Much. Cake, MOM!!!

With a cupcake instead.  Much more his speed.

UPCOMING CHALLENGES:

• We haven't started him on whole milk yet...let alone cold milk. This lil' turkey still likes his formula nice and warm.  And we still need to fully transition to a sippy cup and get rid of the bottles.  
• Paci's have not been a big issue so far...at home, he only gets them at bed time or during naps, and we keep one in his car seat but he usually just plays with it.  But theoretically, we're supposed to wean him off of those soon.
• Same goes for the bedtime bottle.  
• Moving into the new house.  Renovations have been a big challenge--not that we have a ton of stuff to do to the new house to get it ready, but the list we have is enough--especially when we both work full time, and have to pick up the kiddo from day care by 6.  We usually leave work around 4:30p, get to the new house, work for about an hour, and then have to leave to go pick him up.  Sometimes one of us will stay at the house and continue working, while the other picks him up and then goes home to start dinner.  Weekends are pretty well full of more work at the house, but Lil' Man is kinda clingy, or into everything, so we can't let him roam free upstairs while we work (since it's a disaster right now).  Sometimes we can get a grandparent or friend to come over and play with him for a few hours while we work.  

Disaster zone or living room?  (The exersaucer will keep him contained/entertained for about 15 minutes, tops, if we HAVE to have him upstairs.  Downstairs we have a couch, pack n play, and a wide array of toys to play with while someone is working upstairs.)

• Walking/Talking: While he loves to cruise holding on to furniture, and will let go sometimes to free-stand, he's not walking yet.  And while he loves to babble/jabber, no real "first" word yet.  He does say "mama" "dada" but they're not always directed at us.

• More teeth:  Ahead of schedule as usual, his upper first molars are starting to come in.  So we've got some fussy days & nights ahead of us.  Guess it's time to bust out the teething rings again!