I mentioned that I started a new job. I now work part time for two different school programs and I have actually never been happier or felt more satisfied. I love the work I'm doing and the learning that I am privileged to be taking part in as a part of my new roles and continuing to work with my amazing boss. I have been fortunate enough to become closer friends with a coworker as well, which makes my heart sing after the friendship I lost last year and the one that kind of fizzled with its potential.
I stopped breast feeding in late August, switching to my frozen stores of milk until that ran out shortly after Killian's first birthday. While I may not have fed him directly from my breast for a full year, he drank breast milk for a full year. After all of the struggling I did with keeping my supply up, dealing with post-partum depression, and managing stress, I have to say that the end of my breast feeding days was actually a relief. I did not have all of the warm fuzzy feelings about it that I anticipated having. I miss the closeness and the feeling that I am doing right by him, but the constant worry about supply and finding an acceptable place to pump and store milk is not missed. Killian made a beautiful and seamless transition to cow's milk. Before we stopped breast feeding, we also bid all bottles goodbye as well and switched 100% to sippy cups by age 11 months.
On September 8th, we celebrated Killian's 1st birthday. I sort of threw his party together, but the day was no less special for it and I don't know that I feel the need to go balls-to-the-wall for a party he won't really remember. So many of those decorations are pointless and expensive and don't enhance the environment as much as the people there. I mean that as no slight to those who choose to decorate to the fullest extent, it just isn't my cup of tea I guess. Perhaps the age of Pinterest has caused us to feel substandard if we don't create our own decorations based around an elaborate theme. I'm no celebrity with a nanny to help me manage my time. My time is better spent interacting with my Nugget.
Killian got his first taste of Halloween this year. We spent a good chunk of money on an adorable costume called the Dinky Dragon. We took him to Night Eyes at the Blank Park Zoo and walked him around the zoo, looking at the few animals that were out in the chill of the evening. He did great and we discovered his love of Smarties candies.
What are the other major milestones and current achievements in this household? Here is a taste:
- Killian began walking in November. We started encouraging him by propping him up against the couch and backing just a few feet away so he could really just lean/stumble over to us. Next, we moved further back from him and then coached him to walk back and forth between Aaron and I. Seemingly without much other prompting, he started walking! He can no longer be stopped and we've had to invest in gates. He can finally hold his own with all of the other kiddos at "school."
- We have seven teeth! There are four on top (one just popped through) and three on the bottom. He was rocking a sweet cross-bite for a while with two centers on top and two centers on bottom with the one on the top right in and one on the bottom left in. It was kind of cute.
- We bid goodbye to the "sink face." He doesn't do it very often anymore, but in its wake we now have hugs and kisses. He often gives me "a love" in the morning after he wakes up, what we call a snuggle on my shoulder.
- He also just recently began giving kisses. One night I was sitting on the floor and he had his binkie in his mouth and was kind of snuggling up to me. I bent down and kissed the top of his head and then resumed watching TV while rubbing his back. Suddenly a heard a little smack and looked down to see him brushing my knee with his binkie-filled mouth! It was so cute! I kind of stared at him in disbelief at first, but then I asked for a kiss and he did it again, touched his binkied mouth to my knee and made a little smacking noise. Uber-cute! He doesn't do it always on demand, but when he does it melts my heart. He also gave one of the daycare girls in his room a kiss, Miss Addie, who happens to be a few months younger than he is. The next day, he came home with an incident report stating that another child had bitten him on the cheek. That is an odd place to be bitten, so I can only assume he was trying to give one of the "ladies" some special attention and he was rewarded with the baby equivalent to a smack in the face. As I tyoe, he is trying to kiss Logan, our "kitty."
- He tries to call people on the phone. I relinquished control of my old iPhone to him a few months ago in hopes he'd leave my real one alone. Nope! He now simply claims them both whenever he can. He will slide the little bar across the screen and try to place emergency calls when he can't get past my lock. He likes to hold the phone up to his ear a lot. He will even offer it to you to see if you've got something to say.
- He dances! He has some seriously moves too! One night, we turned on one of the music stations from our cable and he was going so crazy he kept falling down to the floor.
- He talks...a LOT! He can say words of course, and that list keeps growing, but he just babbles all the time! Our current list of mastered and "occasional" words includes: Mama, Papa, Dada, kitty, puppy, blue, meme (Mine! or Give me!), no (usually accompanied by a finger shake), Nana, Bapa, bubble, ball, hi, baby, and choo choo. Again, there's a lot of gibberish too, but I'm pretty proud of his vocabulary.
- He survived another car trip to NE Iowa for Johnson Christmas. He did really well and actually spent part of the car ride babbling to a book of his.
- He made it through his second Christmas in general. Christmases have typically been a huge ordeal for me, with so many families to try to see and celebrate with, but ever since the Nugget arrived, we've decided to forge our own way in terms of traditions. We are making it a point to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day here in our home as a family. We opened his stocking Christmas Eve, dressed in our Christmas PJs, fell asleep to a Christmas CD, and opened the rest of the presents in the morning. He still doesn't quite grasp gifts yet, as he opened one and then ignored all the others to try to play with the open one. We ended up having to put away the opened ones so he'd look at the others. It took him about 45 minutes to open them all because of this. Dork!
- He saw Santa! We took him to meet Santa this year at Jordan Creek Mall. He got his picture taken and did pretty well considering that the man is a complete enigma to him.
- He reads frequently. I LOVE this development obviously, both as a teacher and a parent, and plan to do everything in my power to continue to foster his love of books. He often brings a book to Aaron or me and then puts his arms up to be held while we read the book to him. He likes to turn the pages, often before we've finished reading them, but he sits pretty well for most stories.
- He survived a New Year's Eve party at our house. Just last night we had ten people and an infant over to play board games as we rang in the new year (though our house was empty by 11:30). He did SOOOOOO well considering the number of people and how unfamiliar he was with them. He also wasn't feeling the best, so he did well in that circumstance too. We had trouble getting him to bed because he wanted to hang out with all of the cool people, but eventually he went down and slept until about 8:00am.
- He puts himself to sleep. This one is probably the hardest milestone for me. For over a year, I rocked my Little Man to sleep on my lap, laying across his boppy. Recently, picked up his boppy and grabbed my hand, walking me down the hall to his room. He pointed to his crib, I put him in to see what he wanted, and he laid down and went to sleep! I was baffled and heartbroken! My Peanut doesn't need me to rock him to sleep anymore. I no longer get to carry his sleeping form to his crib and kiss his little forehead while he's laying in my arms. Just now, I laid his awake in his crib because he was getting pretty grumpy. He may grumble for a few minutes, but soon enough he'll be out to the sounds of his new Rockabye Baby! CD, featuring the song stylings of Kanye West remade in the fashion of lullabies.
~Valerie
