All Grown Up

Jude’s birthday was so much fun!  We had so many people come and show their love for Jude, it was really touching.  His party was car/truck themed, as those sorts of things are his favorite right now.  I think it turned out pretty dang cute.  Here is the cake that I made him.

I think it turned out pretty cute!  And of course, Jude loved his first taste of sugar, though he was a bit danity at first.

But then he tore into it!  And he loves to share his food, so of course he offered me and S a few bites.

He was in such a good mood for the whole party, clearly having the time of his life.  It was so great.

Jude had his 12 month check up today and he is currently 21 lbs and 30.25 inches tall, which puts him pretty perfectly in the middle of the size chart.  The doctor was happy with his growth and development.  He was all over the check up room, crawling and walking all around.  He can do so much now!  He isn’t full out walking, but he is getting very close.  He will take a step or two between toys and will walk to you if you arn’t too far away.  But he still mostly prefers to crawl.  He is really into climbing right now.  Yesterday we were playing in his room and he climbed up and inside of his toy chest.  I love the little proud grin he gets on his face when he manages to do something like that.  He also loves to point at things.  He claps, gives kisses (sometimes), hugs, makes a large variety of noises, says Mama, dog, cat (sometimes), and baba.  He will sometimes sign when he is hungry and we are working on the signs for all done and more.  He dances when he hears music and if it is something really catchy he will try to sing along.  

His temper tantrums have gotten better.  We really appreciated everyone’s advice on it and so we are sticking firm to our “no”s and either going over to play with something without him or ignoring him all together when he starts to have a fit.  I think it is helping and in general we haven’t had too many tantrums lately.  Because of his fits though, he has really perfected his ear piercing scream, which makes S and I both so very very crazy, as I’m sure it is intended to do.  He likes to scream like that when it’s time to go down for naps now and it is getting really hard to get him down, especially in the morning.  I think that we are going to work on transitioning him to one middle of the day nap this week and see if that helps.  We are also going to be trying to wean him off the bottle and from formula to whole milk this month, so things might get a bit crazy.  But it can’t be as bad as the week we went cold turkey on getting him off of being swaddled and pacifiers.  What a nightmare that was.

All in all, Jude is the light of my life.  He is the best thing that has ever happened to us and I love him so much more that I could ever really express.  This year has flown by and I can’t wait to see what this next year of Jude brings!

-Liz

Our family with Jude at 1 year old

Our family with Jude 1 hour old