12 months & 8 days

It's been awhile since I've updated everyone on Riley's development, especially in light of his first birthday last week. Sorry for the delay...

STATS:
I took him to the doc earlier this week and he weighed in at 22 lbs which surprised us both. I was certain he was at least 25 lbs. I can't remember his height, but he's between the 40-50th percentile in both height and weight. Three months ago he was in the 25th, so I'm happy with the gain.

EATS:
Now that he's a year old, he can pretty much eat anything but nuts. No allergies so far, but I'm not taking any chances with the all-powerful peanut until he's older. To boost his immunity, we give him yogurt and a teaspoon of flaxseed meal in his cereal each day. This was today's breakfast of scrambled eggs-n-cheese, veggies, cheerios & fruit:









He prefers to feed himself, so the eggs ended up on the tray:









He eats pretty much anything I offer him...for now. Its the quantities that I'm never sure of as they vary from day to day. Today he wanted to share about half of his eggs with mama...yum.

I've got him down to two bottles a day -- one at lunch and one at bed. I hope to have him off bottles entirely within the next couple of months. He still spits up once every few days so we're still waiting for the end of that.

SLEEPS:
He down to one daytime nap as two naps were causing him not to nap with the rest of the daycare kids. He still sleeps well -- from 8p to 6a on average, give or take 30 min. Since I get up at 6am anyway, it works well for our schedule.

HEALTH:
We seem to have made it through the first winter at daycare better than I feared. I only had to take a few days off, due to Riley being too sick to go in. He did have a string of colds and possibly the flu once, but for the past 6-8 wks he's been well. J checked his ears back in March when Riley started pulling on one of them. They were red, so Dr. Dad started giving him daily adjustments. Within a week the ear looked good again. We sure are glad to have a chiro in the house. I expect next winter to be better now that Riley-boy's got a stronger body.

Tooth #5 is starting to poke through...the canine on the upper left.

TALKS:
Officially his first word is "uh-oh". He started imitating me about a week ago and now he says it when he drops something (as I often do.) I got a short video of him doing it this morning:



He jabbers all the time and seems to associate "da-da" with Jonathan. But I also think that it's his all-purpose word as he says it all day long. He's also started saying "ya-ya-ya...." and exaggerates the stretching out of his jaw to expose his lower teeth. Very cute.

ACTIVITIES:
He is still the king of destruction... we can't build anything or even put it "back together" without Riley knocking it down, throwing the pieces around etc. I sure hope the folks at Children's aren't looking for stacking skills at his June appointment, or else they are sure to order another evaluation by Early Intervention.

Ducky has been forsaken for the love of balloons and balls. He was afraid of balloons until we went to Trader Joe's a few weeks ago and he wanted one of their free ones at the register. He got days of enjoyment out of it. He's still playing with the six left over from his birthday party.

The other thing he loves is getting into cabinets. Not necessarily to pull things out, but enjoys the opening of the doors and drawers. This is the trouble he gets himself into in the church nursery, in addition to stealing the toys that other kids are playing with.

Our boy is finally enjoying his books. First he has to pull them down from the shelf, then he sits among them and "reads" them. I'll be in getting ready and realize that I haven't heard boo from him for several minutes, and find him engrossed in Goodnight Moon. Makes his mama proud.









And boy, does he love to swing and slide -- he just squeals with delight and does not seem to tire of it.

He's getting more confident on his feet, but not ready to take any steps without at least one hand being held. It won't be long though...

I know every parent says this, but this year has gone by so quickly. Thankfully, we really enjoy the "now" with our boy and aren't always looking to the next stage. It's exciting to see our son grow and become the boy he was meant to be.

I leave you with my current favorite picture of my sweet boy:









We love our Riley!

Shelby