13 Months

I've been lazy with updating the blog lately. James is now 13 months old. He eats A LOT. I expected his appetite to slow down some once he turned 1 year old but I think it has increased. In this photo he had just eaten (and worn) 3 pancakes...not just the silver dollar sized pancakes either. He is also very messy when he eats, as you can see!

About two weeks after James turned 1 year old he started walking. At first he would only walk from mommy to daddy and back. After about 2 weeks of that he started walking from one piece of furniture to another. These days he walks all over the house, turns corners, and can walk in circles. He still can't stand up on his own without pulling up on something so he still spends a fair amount of time crawling.

This month James learned to take the rings off and on this toy. He is very proud of his accomplishments with this toy and will clap for himself and look to you to clap for him also. He also loves to put clothespins in a two liter bottle, crayons in a crayon box, and pom poms in a juice bottle. He takes these things as serious work and will sit for long amounts of time working on it.

He has also started talking a little bit. James loves to say "uh-oh". At first he would just say it when he really accidentally dropped something....I happily remarked about that to someone and the very next day he started throwing things on the floor and looking at me innocently and saying uh-oh! Mostly this happens when he is finished with his meal and he feels like maybe the floor is hungry for his leftovers. He also says "hi" and "bye" to anyone near who isn't paying attention to him. If you say it first however he will just stare at you like he isn't sure if it's ok to talk to strangers. He says mama and daddy (the latter all day long about everything). He points to anything he wants and says "this". Most of the time he is pointing to things he knows he isn't allowed to have!

He has also started giving us the nicest, wettest, open-mouthed kisses. Lee thinks it's important we teach him the closed mouth appropriate version soon. He may be right since I did catch him giving our little 4-year-old friend Emma one of his special kisses on the mouth recently.

James also got several new teeth this month. He got his 4 first molars and another lower incisor. He nows has 11 teeth in his mouth. It is funny to watch him eat now that he has gotten molars. He has figured out that his molars help him chew so he sticks food in his mouth and uses his hand to help position the food just right so he gets it on his molars. Then he chomps down!

The Children's Museum

We have a Children's Museum in town and I thought it might be a fun place James would enjoy. We went for a visit a couple weeks ago with a friend and James loved it. He crawled all over the place even though there were a lot of bigger kids running all around him.

There is an "under 2" room that we played in. James loved having Mommy push him around in this ambulance. There were also big trucks he could push around.

The market is a favorite room for all children. Every time we went by, there were a lot of kids in there but right before we were going to leave a daycare with all their kids had to leave so the market cleared out. James loved shopping and pushing around his cart!

We ended the day with a little reading in the bookstore. James loved these little books with bugs as the main characters.

Bye-bye Franklin

We had a turtle named Franklin that was my classroom pet when I was in the classroom. James liked to watch him and help me feed him but he was very dirty and I had to clean his tank A LOT. I wasn't very good with keeping up with it. I cleaned his tank right before James' birthday party and 4 days later it was starting to get dirty and the filter was clogged. Normally the tank would last for 1-2 weeks. It was annoying to try to keep up with but I was ok with it. 4 days I'm not willing to deal with so I decided it was time to find a nice pond for Franklin to call home. As it turned out, 2 days later we were going to a park (with a nice pond) for a Memorial Day cookout. Franklin came along but had a one-way ticket. It was a touching scenario and while we were watching Franklin walk off into his new home James reached over and patted his daddy on the back then leaned over and gave me a hug. It's good we have James to comfort us in our loss.

A Year of James

Newborn (coming home from the hospital)

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

10 months

11 months

12 months

It's Party Time!

the decor

I found the idea for the ruffled streamers on a blog I follow and the banners came from my research on monkey birthday parties. I found the happy birthday banner here. The monthly pics banner was a conglomeration of several other banners I found online.

the food

the cake

James wasn't really sure about the sticky icing on his cupcake but once I opened up the cupcake and gave him some of the cake he loved it. Since he didn't like the icing he didn't make too much of a mess of his face but he did get a nice stripe of chocolate down the side of his face.

gift madness

James did a pretty good job of helping to open presents and looking at the gifts he got but there was one point in the party where we stopped opening presents and wondered where James had gone. We found him sitting in the corner with his box of books reading a book. I wish I had gotten a picture of it because it was pretty funny. I guess all the attention finally got to him and he just needed a little time alone!

One Year Old

Well, James is now a year old and I think this is the best age yet. A couple weeks before he turned a year old he started being able to go from a crawling position to a sitting position. This helps him be able to play with his toys better by himself. He can sit for a long time and play with his toys by himself, especially since he has new birthday toys. This entertains him while I am getting his food ready or our dinner ready, etc. He will sit and giggle and tell stories to himself...I think he has a great imagination!

He is also learning things very quickly now. Last week I taught him to point to his nose when I ask where his nose is. I can also ask him what a fish says and he will make a kissy face.

James is also learning to communicate without screaming. He has known the signs for "more" and "all done" for awhile but he would still scream at me first or while he did the signs instead of just politely telling me what he wanted (I'm sure we still have a long way to go on this one). This past week he would just sign more and point to what he wanted more of...no screaming! I'm starting to feel like we each speak a broken version of each other's language instead of not knowing ANY of each other's language. It's kind of fun. He also says "hi" to anyone near us at the grocery store or a restaurant or the street and says "yes" with a clap when I ask him if he wants to take a bath or go swimming, etc.

James isn't walking yet but he has taken a few 2 or 3 step controlled falls and will walk with you just holding one of his hands. He is trying to figure out this balance thing but doesn't seem really interested in taking off on his own yet.

I've decided that the best way to be ok with your baby turning 1 is to have fun planning his birthday party so my next post will show fun party pics.

How Old Is James?

(more birthday pics to come soon!)