13 months

Last night as I was uploading some recent photos I started to shed some tears, tears of genuine love, tears of joy coupled with fear, fear that if anything ever happened to my Bomby I don't know what I'd do. He is just so darn fun. Despite his increasing self-agency and expressiveness which often translates to mini temper tantrums or breakdowns fostered by the desire to have something that we deem inappropriate, he is such a joy day in and day out.

He is a little guy. We are not really sure how it happened since his dad was such a big baby and he seems to eat a lot, but he is very active. He has the buff-est baby body I have ever seen. He is a slim jim, a tall drink of water and when I compare him to other babies his age I get a tad concerned, wondering if he will always be so skinny. I am trying to bulk him up by now serving him whole milk with all his meals instead of water - more on milk in an upcoming post. But his one year visit confirmed that he is only 21 lbs. and 30 inches, putting him in the 10th percentile for weight and the 50th for height. He is still in his infant car seat...will be getting the new car seat soon though.

Some of his favorite activities lately include toting his blankie all around the house and waving it around like a red flag in a bull pin, exploring the drain in the shower (still), doing body flops and "jumping" on our bed, playing outside, especially with rocks, anything with water (note, we started swim lessons a few weeks ago and he likes it), grabbing whole fruit from the fruit basket and eating it whole and playing with the soy sauce bottle - I know it sounds weird, but every time I open the fridge he grabs this bottle and carries it all around the house and babbles. If I take it away from him, he throws a fit. So I emptied most of the soy sauce out of it and just monitor that he isn't throwing it or anything causing it to shatter. One day I hid the bottle by placing it on the top shelf and he was so perplexed, looking all over the fridge for it. Too funny. The only thing I can think of is that he is trying to mimic his Dad - he sees him sometimes carrying a beer bottle and talking and so maybe he us trying to replicate that. He seems to be mimicking his Dad all the time now. His Dad roars, he roars. He is making attempts at playing hockey with the little sticks he has, especially after watching his Dad knock stuff around. He even grabs the remote and points it at the TV.

Changing his diaper is still a big struggle. I read recently in the book "Touchpoints" by T. Barry Brazelton that this is typical at this stage in development - that anything you do that prevents their increasing desire to move, especially to stand and walk, can cause them to have a breakdown. I dread diaper time. And getting dressed is something I do as he is on the move. It is a process. But he is showing signs of understanding this process. Yesterday as we were getting dressed to leave the house he actually attempted to put his shoes on by himself.

Walking is a process and as indicated through the video posts on the blog, you can see that he is progressing nicely and is taking more and more consecutive steps. Of course he falls, and of course he still crawls, but he is walking more and more. He seems to like when he has shoes on - must be a different feeling than walking around barefoot.

Verbally he distinguishes from "mama" and "dada" although he often just repeats the syllables so it is more like "ma ma ma ma." He also seems to understand "no" because when he doesn't want to do something, like have his diaper changed or go in his high chair, he shakes his head and says "na na na na."

Gastronomically we haven't introduced to many new foods lately because he is increasingly eating whatever we eat. We are starting to try to eat dinner all together before he goes to bed; this is a goal as the days get shorter and it gets darker earlier, and so that we are not eating dinner after putting him down which after preparing sometimes be after 8/8:30 p.m. I am trying to introduce more proteins and seeds & nuts - he has eaten chickpeas, sesame (ground as tahini), peanut butter, flax seeds, almonds, cantaloupe, plums and grapes this month.

We do swim class once a week, have been going to the park with Niah and have been watching cousin Noah twice a week (more on this in another post). I checked out Gymboree to see if we wanted to sign up for those classes too, but decided to wait until winter when it is too cold to play outside. For now, we are trying to enjoy the nice end of summer/start of fall weather and play outside and go for walks every day.