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!

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!

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.

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?

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.

Anyway, we’re in Indiana celebrating. This post is scheduled to go live at 4:24 a.m. on Dec. 20 — one year precisely after the little guy was born. I’ll post more about his birthday and some reflections on the year later. No time for blogging now!

In the meantime, if you have a spare hour, go ahead and read his birth story if you’d like.

Anyway. He says “bye-bye” whenever we hang up the phone or when we’re about to leave. It’s so cute! He sometimes says it without prompting, especially if it’s the phone situation.

He seems to enjoy looking through his books. He’ll grab one off the shelf and sit down and turn through the pages. Sometimes he’ll bring one over to me and we’ll read it together. YAY BOOKS

He also has a chore, if you could even call it that.

For some reason, he loooves taking clothes that were in a pile and throwing them all over the floor. If laundry is on a chair, it won’t be there for long.

He also likes taking clothes out of the washing machine.

So now, anytime I need clothes taken out of our front-loader, I just open the door and call him over, and he immediately goes to work. Heehee! I wish he could put them in our dryer but maybe that’ll come later.

For now, he just pulls the wet laundry and throws it on the floor, and then I put it in the dryer above.

It’s kind of helping, right?

Now, things are much better.

When Johnny was a newborn, he would not sleep unless he was being held or on my chest. It was a scary, sleep-deprived period of time for me. We got him a swing when he was two weeks old and he would sleep some in there, but not always.

Being new parents, we really didn’t know what to do.

I sleepily flipped through Baby Wise at the recommendation of some folks, and I just didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t feel comfortable with sleep training a baby who was barely two months old, even though the book said that was an appropriate age.

I tried the Baby Wise schedule for a few days (we didn’t follow it perfectly at all) and I found that when I tried to stick with a schedule and the clock, I would give the schedule more weight than my baby’s cues. I was starting to tune out his cues if it wasn’t time for him to need something. Not good.

I got rid of that book and picked up the No-Cry Sleep Solution and a few other gentler sleep books. They were sort of helpful, but we didn’t have any results.

Johnny just had amazing radar and would wake up from a deep sleep if I got too far away from him. Most of the time, he wouldn’t sleep unless he was touching me. Or, he wouldn’t sleep for long if I left the room. It was exhausting.

But, little babies have needs. They have a strong need to have physical contact with their mom. Some babies, the need isn’t so urgent. With my son, it was critical in those early months.

He had a need, he knew how to express it, and I couldn’t bear to deny him of that.

Because really, what kind of message would that send? And besides, he needed to be held just like I need air to breathe. I can’t imagine how depriving him of that would affect him.

So I rocked, nursed, and cuddled with him until he fell asleep. Sometimes I’d be able to move him to his crib, sometimes I stayed put, too exhausted to do anything else. We mostly co-slept. And for the most part, as long as I went along with what Johnny wanted, it was working. We were getting sleep. That’s what matters, right?

Unfortunately, some folks (and the pediatricians, ugh) thought he was being spoiled. If we didn’t sleep train (i.e. make him cry it out) and sleep in his crib, then he’d still be wanting to sleep in my bed until he was much older. Kind of like the argument that if a baby doesn’t wean young, they’ll nurse until they’re 7. Riiiight.

Anyway, since the pediatrician didn’t have any medical reason why this wasn’t a good arrangement, and since the doc doesn’t live in my apartment and have to listen to Johnny’s crying, I decided to just do what worked for us.

We’d try comforting him and laying him down in his crib. He would wimper, stand up, and scream as if he were on fire. I’d have to leave the place, or take a shower or something while Shane would work with Johnny. It physically hurt me to hear him cry like that and not go hold him.

Sometimes, despite our soothing, rocking, patting, etc. — it would still take an hour (or three!) to get him to fall asleep in his crib. Once that happened, he’d be awake again in an hour. It was rough on all of us.

I knew at that point, if we did try to have him cry it out, and check on him every 5 minutes or so, that he would just scream and keep on screaming. He’d be angry with us and wouldn’t understand that he needed to go to sleep. It wouldn’t work.

He’s gotten older now. Now at nearly a year old, I think he understands the concept of object permanence. He knows that when we leave the room, we’re still nearby even though he can’t see or hear us. He doesn’t have a panic attack when we do leave.

We got him a nightlight, a Glow Worm, and turned on a really loud box fan instead of a quieter fan. Oh, and now that he’s older and mobile, we put a thin pillow in his crib. Pillows should not be used until a baby is older, if at all, and I get that. But the crib mattress is foam and insanely firm. It’s great for newborns and little babies, but it’s about as comfortable as sleeping on a tile floor.

And since Johnny was accustomed to sleeping in an actual bed, this hard thing we were trying to get him to sleep on simply wouldn’t do.

With the nightlight on, fan roaring and pillow there for him, Johnny whines a bit sometimes, but he will lay himself down, get comfortable and fall asleep.

HUGE break through. I think the props have helped, but I also think he’s just now developmentally ready for this. If we did the same thing a few months ago, it would not have worked.

When he wakes up during the night (and yes ma’am, he does) we now have him fuss (but not all-out cry) for a few minutes to see if he’ll go back to sleep or if he needs something. He does put himself back to sleep unassisted now, which is so incredible to me.

Sometimes, he does need something. He once bit his lip and obviously needed comforting. And sometimes, he needs to nurse. I trust that he’ll let us know when he does need something, and since we’re pretty tuned to his cues, we can tell.

He does end up in bed next to me at some point during the night, and soon enough that won’t be the case. I think he’s close, though.

He’s so busy during the day that I do think he makes up for calories he needs by nursing at night.

He sometimes fusses and almost heads toward his crib because he wants to go to sleep.

A few months ago, if you told me he would do this, I don’t know that I would have believed you. And, I would have carried on and put him to sleep in the exact same way. It’s what he needed at the time. He doesn’t need that now. He’s growing into a big boy.

And really, I don’t see what all the fuss is about having the baby sleep independently all night long from such a young age. Yes, it might help the mom get a little more sleep. But they’re little for such an incredibly short time. I don’t need to push him to grow up faster than he’s ready.

Some moms have  babies who are really easy sleepers from the get-go. Some are really high-needs when it comes to sleep. I think we all have to do what works best for our babies and our families.

He is much better at walking but still looks a little like Frankenstein when he moves. It’s pretty hilarious. He cannot stand up without holding onto something first.

He has said “mama” for awhile and he’s starting to say “bye-bye” but I don’t know if he’s using it properly, or if he’s just babbling it. It won’t be too much longer and he’ll be talking up a storm! It’ll be great to hear what’s going on in that brain of his.

When he eats, he says “mmm” with appreciation. I’m so glad he’s not a picky eater.

Can I confess something? Ok, thanks, I will: I love buying him toys. I swore that I wouldn’t go overboard with toys, but I just can’t help it. I don’t think I’m quite overboard, but I need to cool it. Today, we bought him a Glow Worm.

He LOVES that thing. He smiles so big when it lights up! I wanted him to have it because I thought it might help him get to sleep, since its face lights up and is so charming. It’s too soon to tell.

Nursing is still going well, yay!

He’s getting pretty heavy. I don’t know how much, since he hasn’t been officially weighed in awhile. I’m guessing 23 lbs. I’m still able to wear him in my beloved Baby K’Tan, thank goodness.

He’s able to wear some t-shirts that are size 12 months, but he’s most comfortable in size 18 or 24-month items. Pants are 18 months, and we have to roll some up so he won’t trip.

He can clap his hands and wave.

Oh, and he has his first tooth finally! It’s on the bottom and it’s so little! I think it’s not in all the way. I wonder when more will start to show up.

We’ll hopefully be in Indiana for his birthday (as long as the weather holds up) and we’ll have a small party. I’m going to make some monkey cupcakes.

Johnny is cute as could be, ever-so-cuddly, and we just love him to bits!

2. We’re having Thanksgiving with my friend, her husband and son and possibly more people. It’s nice that when you can’t be with your extended family, you can be with friends!

3. I’m planning on making lots of things to bring, including spinach balls (haven’t tried this recipe. If it’s a dud, I just won’t bring ‘em!), Carol’s broccoli salad, Kathy’s pretzel salad, and these hilarious tiny Turkey dinner cupcakes. I hope mine come out looking like these.

4. Shane’s brother and his brother’s girlfriend are coming here for Thanksgiving weekend. YAY! We always have fun and I’m sure we’ll have a blast no matter what we end up doing.

5. I bought a fiber-optic Christmas tree that can sit on our table. It’s less than 3-feet-tall. It’s festive. I hope Johnny doesn’t bother it too much. So far, so good.

6. Johnny’s birthday is December 20. Christmas is December 25. He will be one. Thus, he will not know or understand that his parents did not buy him any gifts for those days. Ok — we did buy one thing, a tent, but we don’t know when we’ll give it. You see, we figure he’ll be overwhelmed with stuff from other people. Maybe. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm a little dude. So we’ll wait and see how it goes, and then give him presents from us at a later time. Spreading out the holiday cheer, we are. Cuz the boy doesn’t need more toys right now.

7. I was concerned about a lack of a place for Johnny to play over the wintery months. Mall playgrounds aren’t that fun and they’re usually covered with snot. Museums are fun but they’re kind of a trek for us. I was thrilled to find out about an indoor playspace specifically for newborns through kindergarteners. Plenty of creative toys, things to climb on, explore, and have fun. This place has a no-sick-kids policy, which should help all of our immune systems. It’s not too far from where we live. Excited!!

8. I guess we could just say that a membership to the indoor playground is like a big Christmas present to Johnny.

9. Speaking of that boy, he is cutting in his first tooth. It’s starting to really become visible, but only when he smiles a certain way. He’s doing an imitation of a Jack-o-lantern.

10. We’re planning on going to Pittsburgh’s Light Up Night, as long as the weather is reasonable. We went two years ago and it was really something! I hope we can get some good pictures. Namely, one we can use for our (free!) Christmas photo card.

11. Johnny is wearing size 18 and size 24-month for his shirts, depending on the brand and the fit. He can fit into some 12-month shirts, but not really. The 12-month pants don’t fit him anymore, either. So big! Also, I don’t think they size infant clothing properly. He’s not actually the size of a 2-year-old.

12. I’m almost finished with all my Christmas shopping. I’ve never even started shopping this early in years past.

13. We love our new church. It’s a different church that I mentioned awhile ago. This place is much smaller (maybe a congregation of 30-40 on a busy day) but we feel it’s exactly where we belong. We both look forward to going all week, and get a lot out of the service. Plus, everyone there is so darn friendly! The web site is um…not exactly functional, so Shane and I are going to fix it.

14. I like list blog posts like this. I can tell you lots of bits.