One Year

1 year.

How has it been that long already?

This little dude was in a hurry to come once he made up his mind.

Ocean continues to giggle madly and crawl as fast as he can towards whatever he's supposed to be staying away from (stairs, chick brooder, etc).

He's walking more and more. He took his first steps this past month, just like River did. Sunshine didn't take her first steps until she was 14 months old. How much is gender, how much is personality? Sunshine is much more cautious than the boys. But birth order could play into it as well- the boys have a big sister to look up to. Just this past week his confidence has skyrocketed and he's started walking (ok, staggering) more and more.

His top two front teeth finally broke through. As a breastfeeding mama, I'm not at all sad about that. However, I do feel like teething has been a more painful experience for him because they came in so late.

Ocean likes making noises with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. It's like a new toy :)

sharing a popsicle with mommy- it felt good on his sore little gums

that face! mommy didn't give the popsicle back fast enough and he was not happy

He really wants to give up his morning nap, but he's just not ready. The last three Sundays he's stayed awake all through church (we have 9 am church), only to fall asleep in the last two minutes after fussing for the fifteen minutes before that.

he usually falls asleep during our hikes

Ocean is such a giggly baby. Sometimes all it takes is a look to set him off. He's also very ticklish :)

at the Fourth of July parade. he looks so much older here.

He's starting to wean himself. We consistently nurse first thing in the morning, but only sometimes nurse one more time after that. He's too busy and not as interested. I'm curious to see how long the morning nursing lasts. I don't think it'll go to fifteen and a half months like River did, but he's lasted a year like Sunshine, so I'm happy. Still a little sad to see this time coming to a close though.

Like River, he loves his blankie. The other day I'd brought his car blankie into the house to be washed, but when we ran errands later that day I forgot to bring one with us. An hour and a half of screaming ensued while we took care of our errands and he voiced his extreme displeasure at not having his blankie to snuggle. In his mind, car seat time is thumb sucking and blankie snuggling time.  Thumb sucking can't happen without his blankie (River's the same way), so not only did he not have his blankie, but he couldn't suck his thumb either. Lesson learned.

he loves eating

look at that cute face!

At his one year checkup he weighed 21 pounds, 14 oz and was 28.5" tall. That's about the 50th percentile for both, I think. I feel like he's a super chubby baby, but he's really not. He's just the chubbiest of our babies :)