1st Birthday Celebrations!

Ryan's 1st birthday celebrations started in St. Louis where he got some new presents from Gi-Gi. On the actual day of we had a quiet family celebration at home where Ryan opened the presents he received from his daycare family. Like most 1 year olds he was much more excited about the tissue paper than the toys...



The celebration continued over the weekend as Ryan's Nanima and uncles came in from Chicago. We had a Sesame Street babies themed party complete with giant balloon Elmo and a Cookie monster and Elmo cake.

We gave Ryan some cake but most of it ended up on him rather than in his tummy.

Although I know Ryan won't remember the party, we had a great time and are thankful to have so many great friends and family to come and celebrate with us.

Here are more pictures from the festivities!

Thanksgiving

Life seems to have gotten in the way of posting... in a good way. I finally had a chance to download pictures from November and Ryan's birthday (which I'll get to in the next post). For Thanksgiving we visited Ryan's Gi-Gi in St. Louis. Ryan did get another ear infection on the trip, but it didn't stop him from having a great time visiting with all his relatives. The trip was low-key, and exactly what we needed. Here's Ryan bonding with Gi-Gi:

There were a bunch of other things that happened in November, but frankly it was too long ago to remember. Here are a couple of photos from Baby Loves Disco, Thanksgiving, and around the house.

Bath Time

Alright, I need some ideas... Ryan has suddenly developed a paralyzing fear of the bath. He refuses to sit down and just stands there and cries the whole time we're washing him. We have tons of bath toys and I'm pretty sure the water temperature is fine. Any thoughts? I don't think he's ever LOVED the bath, but he's tolerated it fairly well up until now. It could be that he's just starting to express himself, lucky for us. Anyone go through this? Any ideas on how to make bathtime fun?

AHHHHH!

I decided not to use the screaming Ryan with Santa picture as our holiday card, so as promised, here's the pic. I still feel bad for laughing at him while he's being traumatized, but really, it's too funny.

A Battle Victory

As I mentioned before, Ryan is suddenly not interested in milk. And he's even less interested in it now that it's in a cup. I think he gets plenty of calcium from yogurt and cheese, but I've still been concerned with his liquid intake. He likes water, but the doctor told us to withhold it from him for now and give him milk instead. The last couple of days, he's probably had a total of 4 oz per day, tops. I beg and plead with him to take the milk, but he just hands it back.

Last night we tried chocolate milk. Now I really did not want to do chocolate milk because I became addicted to it as a kid myself, but I felt desperate. I went back and forth in my mind, and decided to just try it. Didn't matter, he still wouldn't take it. I did some online research and found parents who have tried and succeeded with strawbery milk, nesquik, and get this, OJ and milk combined. They say it curdles and looks gross but the kids love it. Eww. This morning I decided to get creative and made Ryan a yogurt shake. I took 4 oz of blueberry Yo Baby yogurt (which he loves) and blended it with 4 oz of whole milk. Tada! He drank almost the whole thing! Yay for small victories!

Welcome to Whinytown

Does some switch go off in a 1 year old's brain that tells them now to act like a toddler? This morning Ryan whined on and off for 2 hours. Didn't cry, didn't seem horribly upset by the lack of bottle, just really whiny. Every time I picked him up, he'd stop and cuddle, which is nice and cute and all, but mommy has to get ready for work! As soon as he was back on the floor, the whining started all over again. The weird/funny part was at point he was about 5 feet away from me, and instead of just walking over, he laid his head down on the floor and started whining again. This stalemate went on for about 3 minutes until I gave in and picked him up. Of course when I took him to daycare, he was totally happy and lunged for Ana. Humph.

So mothers of toddlers out there... did this happen to you? Did your cute and easygoing baby turn into a whiny toddler seemingly overnight?

1 Year Check Up

We took Ryan in for his 1 year check up today. My little baby is now a toddler.

Ryan is growing pretty much on track although I worry a little about his weight. He's on the skinny side and has steadily dropped percentiles. The doctor wasn't worried though and said that they usually see toddlers start to drop percentiles around 1 year and then stabilize on a curve around 15 months. He's very happy and active and eats when he's hungry, so I guess I'll have to trust the doctor. Here are the other stats:

Height: 31 inches (84%)
Weight: 21 lbs 4 oz (26%)
Head: 46 cm (38%)

The 1 year mark also means some big changes. We've introduced whole milk which he seems to like. We're also going cold turkey today on bottles and switching completely to a cup. Right now Ryan associates sippy cups with water and bottles with milk so if we put milk in a sippy cup, he takes a sip, looks at me funny, and hands it back. Today we're going to forgo the bottles completely and only offer milk in the cups. We'll see what happens. I'm hoping some extra yogurt and cheese will make up for the milk he won't drink. I'm not too worried about taking the bottle away since he doesn't seem too attached to it. Also, we can slowly introduce any and all foods now since we have no history of allergies in either of our families. Justin seems eager to give him shellfish, so we'll see how that goes too.

We also joined the coop at Ryan's daycare, which means we bring breakfast, lunch, and snack for all the kids on Mondays. So now he'll be eating what all the other kids eat (they were pretty much already giving him the food, but this way I don't feel guilty about mooching).

We had a great weekend celebrating Ryan's birthday. I will post about the festivities later this week...