12 Months Old!!

My oh my, how this first year has gone by so fast. It has been absolutely wonderful and perfect. We are truly lucky and blessed with the best baby in the whole world. Ever. (Okay, maybe I’m slightly biased…) But seriously, he is an awesome kiddo. We have so much fun with Hudson all of the time. He is generally very laid back and happy all the time. And we are so proud to be his mom and dad!!

We checked in with Dr. S on the 13th and here are Hudson’s stats:

Weight: 19.5 lbs – 25th percentile

Height: 28 3/4 inches – 10th percentile

Head Circumference: 47cm – 75th percentile

 

Here are some fun things that he’s been up to…

• He can say Mama, Dada, Dog (Daaa), Cat (Dat), Hi (Hi-eee), Bye Bye, Uh Oh, Owww, Whoa, Dance (Datz), Thank You (Daa-Duu), and Hudson (Ud-Sa)
• He can say all of the above, but gets stuck on particular words for days at a time. He said Mama for a month straight about 4 months ago. The past few weeks everything is Dada. Some of the words he will repeat after we say them while others he knows the appropriate time to say them. Dog, cat and uh-oh are always used in the correct context. Of course, we act like he’s the smartest baby in the whole world. But, I guess that’s our job because after all, we are his proud parents. :)
• He can clap, wave hi and bye bye and points at things
• He knows “More” in sign language
• As you can tell from his stats above, he’s in no rush to put on the lbs or shoot up like a beanstalk….so he’s right in line with his clothes size and he’s wearing 12 month clothes. He’s in size 3 diapers.
• He still goes to sleep at 8pm and wakes up between 7 and 7:30am. Our night time routine consists of: dinner around 6:45 or 7:00 and then bath time. After his bath, we’ll play for a short bit in his room and maybe read a book or 2. Then we’ll drink some milk and will sing our regular songs. Some nights we’ll sing 2 songs and other nights we’ll go for the full show. Poor kid was not blessed with a mom and dad that have good singing voices. Something tells me he doesn’t mind. :) Our favorite songs to sing to him are: I love you a bushel and a peck, You are my Sunshine, Twinkle Twinkle, The Red Red Robin, I love you, You love me….(yes, I know….it’s the Barney song. It’s been permanently stuck in my head from my days of babysitting and I just can’t help but to sing it), The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Row, Row, Row your Boat. We LOVE singing songs with him. I have such fond memories of singing songs with my mom at night time when I was young.
• On a good and normal day, he will take two naps. The first one around 10 or 10:30am for an hour or so. The second around 3:30 or 4 for an hour. (Of course he naps like clock work at his babysitter’s house and will nap for her up to 2 hours at a time! Go figure…)
• We switched over to whole milk the week of his birthday and it just took about 4 or 5 days of mixing his formula with milk and then we went cold turkey one day and it’s been all whole milk since then. That same day we went cold turkey with the bottle too and switched completely to sippy cups. He can hold them himself, but sometimes isn’t the best at tilting the cup up and his head back at the same time, so we are still helping him when it’s time to drink his milk. He sips on water throughout the day also. Some of his sippy cups have handles, some have straws, some are tall…..we are just trying out all different types to see which he likes best and also so he doesn’t get completely hooked on one particular type. (I’m relieved and kind of shocked at the same time how easy it was to stop using a bottle.)
• He’s eating all table foods now and likes tons of different things. Some of his favorites are yogurt, cheese, peas, bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon and mandarin oranges.
• He is a great player and will play independently very well. (He’s actually doing that right now so that’s how I am able to work on the blog). There are times when he definitely wants our attention to play with him, but there are lots of times when he is content with his toys or books on the living room floor as long as he knows we are nearby.
• He loves to dance. His music table is great because he’ll stand up and play with it and once it starts with some of the tunes, he’ll start bouncing and shaking his toosh! I also play music on the tv a lot and rather than preferring the toddler music station, he actually gets more into things with a good beat like hip hop and dance music. Just this week when he dances he now turns his head from side to side. No clue where he got that from, but it’s precious!
• The other day I was holding him and he said “awwww” and patted my shoulder. He totally got that from me. I will hug and love on him a lot and say awwww and I guess he’s caught on. We also are trying to teach him to be gentle with Kaiser and Boots and I will say “awwww, be gentle with the dog or cat” and then I will pet and love on the animals and he’s starting to catch on. He’s trying to pat them and pet them (if they’ll stay still and close to him long enough). He’s realizing he has a better chance of getting to pet them if he’s not chasing after them while screaming at the same time!
• He has been a mama’s boy big time the past month or so. It’s funny…..he says dada constantly, but wants his mama all the time. I know kiddos go through phases and it’s constantly changing and I’m sure next month he’ll be wanting dada all the time.
• He is cruising all around the furniture, coffee table, chairs, etc. He will stand independently for anywhere from 3 seconds to up to 15 or 20, but has yet to really take some steps. A couple of times this past week he has taken one step but then fell immediately, so I don’t know if I would count it as his “first steps.” We think he’ll start taking steps and walking anytime now…..so we’ve got the video camera ready to go!
• He knows how to turn the TV, DVD player and stereo on and off now, so we are working on teaching him NOT to do that…..good luck to us!
• He is way more into his books now but doesn’t necessarily have the attention span for me to read a full story. He loves any books that are touchy/feely with textures. 8 Silly Monkeys and That’s Not My Dragon are by far his favorites for the past few months. (Which is evident by his teeth marks on the corners of those books!)
• A month or so ago he got to the crib rail before I was able to cover it up….shame on me for not doing it sooner. He managed to gnaw on it in about 4 different places just in one night. Oh well….what can ya do?! It is now protected from future gnawing though…
• He has managed to remove the back of the remote that covers up the batteries and has successfully hidden it from us. That and the lens cap to my nice camera. No clue where either of those things are or if we will ever see them again. Something tells me these won’t be the last casualties. I think it comes with the territory of having kids that some things just mysteriously disappear.
• As soon as I open up the back door for one of the pets, he’s gone! He immediately crawls over and out onto the back porch.  That kid can crawl fast too!
• The poor kids knees are permanently red and rough from all the crawling on our tile and back patio. I think the back patio is rough enough to hurt, so he’s started this hilarious spider man looking crawl when he’s on the back porch that keeps his knees off the ground.
• I could probably go on and on because he is constantly doing new things and learning new things. We are always on our toes to see what’s in store next from our precious boy.

Here are Hudson pics from August 10th until September 10th

In Corpus visiting Julie and Jarrett

 

First Spaghetti. Yum Yum.

 

 

We don’t see him fussy too often, but I have to admit it can be cute when he puts on that pouty face. He was NOT a fan of me taking his picture in his new pajamas on this night.

 

How can such a little boy be capable of making such big messes?

 

Happy in the swing. Airplane with Dad. Brushing his hair after bath time.

 

 

Funny Story….He wasn’t falling asleep for his nap on this day and I could hear him on the monitor talking to himself and babbling. All of a sudden I didn’t hear anything and I thought, “Phew, he’s out….maybe I can take a nap too” and I then took a peak at the video monitor to see him tossing something into the air. I though I might have left a wipes case in his crib and that it was wipes, so I went to his room and this is what I found….

 

As you can see in the middle picture below, I had accidentally left one of his dresser drawers open and he had been reaching his hand through the slats and had pulled a lot of his shirts into the crib with him and was just having a grand ‘ol time tossing around the clothes! Needless to say, there was no nap that afternoon.

 

Playing Hard.

 

He has been really into putting things into baskets, bowls, etc and then taking them all back out and then doing it all over again. He found my sock drawer open one day and he threw them all out one by one and then put them all back in one by one. Pretty cute.

   

More Organizing

 

He’s not a fan of bubbles.

 

 

But he is a fan of bath time.

   

 

First Sips of Whole Milk

 

Family walk and swinging at the park.

    

 

Checking out the backyard world

 

Proud of my action shot with his ball mid-air.

  

 

One of his FAVORITE past times…pulling out all of the wipes from his wipes container. I’m working on teaching him to put them back in now and he’s actually catching on :)

Thanks for reading the longest post ever. I can’t get enough of this kiddo and I want to remember all of these little things and fun stories about him because I’m starting to believe what everyone tells me about “how fast it goes by…”

~Sarah