On Saturday, Johnny will be 15 months old! He had his checkup with the pediatrician today.

He weighs 24 lbs. 12 oz. (50th percentile) and is 33 inches long (90 or 95th? Something high). His first measure was 33.5 and that was a bit high for him, so we redid it and he’s still way up there in height. My little boy will be taller than his mama one of these days! Maybe even taller than his daddy. We shall see.

He was NOT in a good mood at the doc’s. Maybe he vaguely remembers what goes on there, or maybe it’s because he was up a lot last night. He’s teething like mad right now and he’s so uncomfortable! Poor guy.

He has four teeth on top and two on the bottom. I’m hoping this round of teething will let a bunch more through so we can just get on with things.

Johnny loves to dance! We’ve tried to capture it on video but he always goes after the camera instead. He gets his feet going really fast and sometimes does some squats, or waves his arms like crazy, or does a jerky chicken/Elaine walk, or goes in a circle. Or sometimes he keeps it casual and just nods to the beat.

As soon as I turn on the radio he starts moving, even if I haven’t found a song for him yet.

My parents are in town visiting right now and he’s had fun dancing with my mom. I think she’s his preferred dance partner. He took 10-15 minutes to just stare them down and warm up to them, and after that he was ready to play. He’s sad when the leave the room or go outside without him and he likes to be held by them and to play with them.

One of his new tricks is we’ll ask him “Where’s your belly button?” and he lifts up his shirt and pokes at it. Haha! We’ve also sort of taught him where his nose is, but he usually just shoves a finger straight up it, so I think we’ll just forget about the nose for awhile.

He’s getting really good at doing laundry. He helps push the basket down the hall and he’ll load the washer, or take things out and hand them to me to put in the dryer. He also will put dirty clothes in the basket. Gotta love that!

He loves standing at his step stool and splashing in the bathroom sink. We were blowing  bubbles earlier today and he started blowing, but I don’t know if he was able to actually make a bubble.

Still pretty anti-bath. We might try a bath in the sink, in case he’s just afraid of the tub and not bathing in general.

He’s working on feeding himself with a spoon. I haven’t tried to teach him too much — I just hand him the spoon and sometimes help him find his mouth with it, but he does seem to enjoy and prefer using the spoon at times. I guess that’s a sign that he’s sorta civilized. Hee!

He likes peas (cooked frozen ones), pears, bananas, grapes, spaghetti, yogurt, cottage cheese, crackers, Cheerios and a whole bunch of other things. Yesterday, he ate sauerkraut! We had Reubens and he wanted some and had a bunch.

He’s growing out of a lot of his size 18-month clothes. Some still fit but some are on their last few wears. Fortunately, I’ve been able to borrow some summer 24-month clothes and we should be set for the season!

His shoe size is 6 and he’s pretty well anti-shoe. That’s fine if we’re inside, but that ain’t gunna cut it when we’re playing outside this spring/summer.

Johnny says “bye-bye,” “hi,” “yes” (on random occasion only…sometimes he’ll just nod), “mama” and I don’t know what else, if anything. My mom said he said “yellow” twice yesterday when she was showing him his yellow blocks. He babbles a lot but most of the time I don’t understand his words.

His favorite words seems to be “uh-oh.” He says that a lot and the “oh” part is a round circle with his mouth. He sometimes drops something just so he can say uh-oh!

He responds to our verbal instructions when he’s in the mood. Like, he’ll go get his ball or bring us something or come give us a hug or kiss.

Sleep has improved tremendously since his early months. We’ll do his sleepy-time routine and he’ll lay in his crib, push his Gloworm to play him a song and he’ll usually nod off to sleep without much help. He still does wake 1-2 times per night, though he does go back to sleep fairly quickly.

I don’t think there’s anything I can do to prevent that. He’ll grow out of it one of these days, right?

Oh, and Shane gave him his first haircut recently. Just a trim off the back and sides. He stood him on his step stool and set him up to play at the sink, and did a snip at a time. Shane says with each snip, he turned and stared for a second, and then went back to playing. Haha!

Johnny is doing more sign language — “eat” and “drink” as well as “nurse,” which was his first one. We’ll say, “do you want to EAT, Johnny?” or something like that, and he’ll pat his cheek like we taught him. And he knows what we mean!

Oh, this communication thing. It’s great.

I’m also diligently working on teaching him how to help out around the house. A one-year-old is not too young. He empties the front-loading washing machine and hands up the wet clothes to me to put in the dryer. He sometimes will load the washer, one item at a time.

Today, he put his pants in the hamper. Oh, and he helps push the hamper down the hall to the washing machine. Loves that one.

YAY, JOHNNY! Big yays!

Yeah, it takes like 10 times longer for him to do it than if I did, but that’s not the point. The point is, he learns to help out. It’s a game for him and I think he really enjoys it.

Eventually, he’ll be old enough to do these things without help. Yeah, it’ll be a few years down the road, but that’s ok!

The two topics aren’t really related, but I wanted to blog about ‘em both.

Johnny and I have attended three baby story time things at the library. All are geared toward babies/toddlers and they’ve all included simple songs, motions and short stories.

Johnny doesn’t seem to care one bit about this stuff yet!

We happened along one story time session today at the library. The songs were pretty dumb. Example: “Jello on the plate, Jello on the plate, wibble wobble wibble wobble Jello on the plate.”

What the heckity heck?

They weren’t all that silly. But still.

Johnny walked around a lot and looked at the other kids and parents and tried to run off with their toys or song booklet. The librarian told me to try to get him to sit with me, and if he didn’t want to, we could leave. She said it much nicer than I made it sound…but for pete’s sake — he’s ONE.

I don’t think he was being too awful disruptive. Other kids were pretty much staying put, but some were crying and some were heading for the door. And I wasn’t just letting him run wild. He was fairly close to me and if he was bothering another baby, I jumped in.

I don’t think he’s really ready for the “sit still and listen and sing” kinda stuff. Maybe when he’s a bit older. For now, he likes to move around and explore. He does like to look at books, but mostly when we’re at home and have quiet time. It’s too early to know his learning style, but for now he’s kinesthetic all the way!

As far as baths go … goodness gracious.

He has an unnatural fear of baths. I don’t know where he got it. As soon as his feet even get near the water, he lets out a high-pitched scream like he’s in horrible distress. He never screams like that unless he’s in the tub, even during his worst melt-down. We’ve tried bath toys, colorful bath fizzies and even hopping in the tub with him.

He likes splashing in the water as long as he’s not in it.

I hope he’ll eventually grow out of the screaming and using all his strength to get out of the tub. It sort of reminds me how he’d scream if he was in his car seat too long. He grew out of that phase, so here’s hoping he grows out of this!

For now, he gets sponge baths.

Stacy tagged me for this meme because I don’t blog nearly enough.

1. Where is your cell phone? On a table where I usually keep it.

2. Your hair? Messy!

3. Your mother? Lives too far away

4. Your father? He does, too

5. Your favorite food? Buffets!

6. Your dream last night? Can’t remember

7. Your favorite drink? Ovaltine

8. Your dream / goal? I’m livin’ the dream

9. What room are you in? Dining room

10. Your hobby? Thrifting, reading, photography, blogging, cooking

11. Your fear? Bad drivers and dangerous roads

12. Where do you want to be in six years? Stacy said “house” and I agree with her!

13. Where were you last night? Bob Evans! Lolz. We wanted breakfast for dinner while we were out

14. Something that you aren’t? pregnant

15. Muffins? Yah sure

16. Wish list item? I have pretty much all I need

17. Where did you grow up? Indiana

18. Last thing you did? Threw a ball

19. What are you wearing? jeans

20. Your TV? Off

21. Your pets? No pets

22. Friends? They are fantastic

23. Your life? Happy

24. Your mood? a-ok

25. Missing someone? People in Indiana

26. Vehicle? Paid off!

27. Something your not wearing? shoes

28. Your favorite store? Thrift stores!

29. Your favorite color? Almost all of ‘em

30. What was the last time you laughed? A few minutes ago

31. Last time you cried? A few days ago re: the children in Haiti

32. Your best friend? I have several!

33. One place that I could go over and over? The library

34. One person who emails you regularly? Karen

35. Favorite place to eat? Didn’t we talk about this earlier? BUFFETS!

I won’t tag anyone because I dunno who’d want to play along, but feel free to consider yourself tagged and then lemme know. K?

Ok um … Johnny turned one last month. He’s almost 13 months now. I feel like a slacker blogger mom for waiting so long to write about his birthday! In my defense, we were in Indiana for the celebration and I wasn’t spending much time on the computer.

Anyway.

We started his birthday by going to Great-grandma Norma’s church, where the children put on a Christmas pageant. It was precious.

His birthday party was held at Grandma Carol & Grandpa Steve’s house (Shane’s parents). In attendance were Uncle Shawn, Aunt Whitney, Grandpa Bo & Grandma Susan (Kacie’s parents), Great-grandma Norma (paternal maternal gma), Great-grandpa L.D. (paternal paternal gpa), Great-aunt Mary, uh…first cousin twice-removed (?) Kaitlin, and of course Shane and me. I love how there were so many branches of the family tree represented there.

We enjoyed an array of finger foods and other nibbles, including veggie and fruit trays (home-prepared), spinach balls, chips and dip, hummus, and a home-prepped deli tray so folks could make their own sandwiches. It was all pretty yummy and reasonably healthy.

We ate this while Johnny took a big ol’ nap. The nap was important — we wanted him to be in a good, social mood for presents and cake!

Once he woke up (ok ok, my dad and I woke him up once I decided he had slept long enough. Hee!) he opened presents.

He opened a few birthday presents a day or two in advance so that he’d have some toys to play with at his grandparents’ house.

All told, he got some Mega Blocks, a Little People bathtime boat, Little People farm blocks, an Elmo Encore Live robot doll, a gorilla driving a banana car, a “Jonathon” shelf, and some books.

The shelf has a funny story behind it. Gifted from his Great-Aunt Mary, she didn’t realize his name is spelled “Jonathan.” She spotted it at a thrift store and bought it knowing that I love thrifted items. We’re in the process of trying to swap the “o” with an “a.”

One of the books he received was really unique. Aunt Shannon made book from the blog posts I wrote when I was pregnant! She includes all of the weekly updates and the birth story. It’s fantastic! If the blog ever conks out, it’s great to know I’ll always have a hard copy of the nonsense I came up while pregnant with him.

Johnny seemed to have fun opening his presents and tearing the paper into tiny bits.

And then…cake! The cake was chocolate with chocolate icing. I was originally going to do some cutesy monkey cupcakes, and then I realized the birthday boy would not actually appreciate their cuteness. So then I was going to make a cake from scratch.

Nixed that idea, because I didn’t want to test out a new recipe and have it turn out bad. So…a boxed cake mix it was. I do think homemade cakes (even from a mix!) taste a lot better than store-bought.

I was *going* to decorate the cake and write “Happy birthday” on it, but the icing didn’t have a writing tip. Thought it came with one. Oh well.

I plopped a square of cake onto his high chair tray and he touched it a little. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, as this was his first piece of cake.

I put a little into his mouth and then he was like, “!!!” and dove face-first into the cake. He used his hands a little, but the face-first method was how he ate most of it.

He also had a little bit of vanilla ice cream and washed it all down with a sippy of whole milk.

He needed a bath after all that fun, and wouldn’t ya know, but he just doesn’t like baths. Cries and tries to get out of the tub. Every time. He does enjoy splashing at a water table or at the sink, but he just doesn’t like being bathed. I really hope he’ll grow out of this, otherwise we’ll have to call him Pig Pen.

We all had a lovely day.  Since Christmas was just 5 days later, he got even more presents then. All of the attention, gifts, cuddles from family, and delicious food amounted to Johnny’s Best Week EVER, I’m pretty certain.

So what’s this 12, almost 13-month-old doing these days? Well, he’s gotten a lot faster at walking. It’s not a run, but that boy can really book it across the room.

He enjoys kicking a ball around and he can manage to keep it under reasonable control. If it gets stuck behind something, he’ll just knock it loose with his hand an keep on kickin’ it.

He loves playing with cars or toys that have wheels. He’ll push them around and make a little “vroom” sound effect for them.

The “gorilla driving a banana” toy is a hilarious little thing. You shake the car and set it down, and then it rolls across the floor while making gorilla sounds. Recently, he figured out that he has to set it down and let go so it’ll actually move. Previously, he’d shake it but hang on tight.

If I say, “Go get your ball” or “Go get your car” he knows what I’m talking about and will go get those things.

He’s now tall enough that he can turn the TV on and off. We have an ottoman in front of the TV to try to discourage that, but he grew and it’s now within reach.

We play hide-and-seek. Sorta. I do the hiding, and he does the seeking. He thinks it’s hilarious, especially if I jump out of my hiding spot and surprise him.

He had his 12-month checkup a few days ago and weighed in at 23 lbs 5 oz and was 31.5 inches tall. For percentile-minded people, that’s the 90th for height and 50th for weight. He went up in height and down in weight, and the doc said it’s common for the weight to go down once they’re superduper active.

He’s all healthy and doing well!

He loves laughing and making us laugh. He’ll do a little silly thing, look at us, and if we laugh then he’ll just crack up and keep on cackling for awhile.

Johnny enjoys flipping through books, unstacking blocks, and making huge messes.

He says “mama,” “bye-bye,” and “baby.” The first two words are used correctly, but when he says “baby” he just randomly says it.

He does the baby sign to tell me he wants to nurse, and that has been fantastic for our communication! I haven’t put a lot of effort into teaching him other signs but I would like to do “eat,” “drink,” “sleep” and maybe a few others.

He is such a hoot and a fun guy to be around. We love him so much! Can’t wait to see what this year will bring.