My One Year Old!

Well, it's true...I officially have a one year old!  My sweet baby turned one last Friday on October 11th

Sadly, this will be my last monthly update.  I know I will still update about Cooper all the time, but this will be my last official monthly blog post about him.  It was also our last monthly photo session with him.  He is next to impossible to take pictures of and to get him to smile for pictures, so I won't miss that part too much :)  It really is crazy to think about this past year and how our lives have completely changed.  Cooper has brought more joy and fun into our lives than I ever imagined.  It's definitely not easy, but I sure do love motherhood!

 We went to the Doctor this morning and he is 29.5 inches (36th%), 22 lbs (59th%) and his head is 18.82" (89th%).  He already wears a size 4 shoe and wears 12-18 months clothes.   Here is what else is going on with Cooper at 12 months....

Sleeping:  Cooper is my perfect little sleeper...at least in his own crib he is!  He did relapse on the whole pack and play sleeping situation and has seemed to again not want to sleep anywhere except for his crib.  I must say, that has probably been the hardest situation to deal with during his first year.  Anyway, his sleeping schedule hasn't changed much as he goes to bed at 7:30 and usually wakes up around 7:30.  He takes a morning and afternoon nap but this month there have been a few times when he only took one nap.  I was wondering if he was getting ready to drop his morning nap, but then there are other days where he will sleep 2 hours in the morning.  A part of me is ready for him to drop the morning nap so we can do more things in the morning and he can take a longer afternoon nap, but the other part of me thinks he is a little too young to drop it.   When did your child drop their morning nap?

Eating:  He is pretty much eating all regular food now with some exceptions of having baby food when I don't have anything else for him to eat.  He loves all fruit cut up, sweet potato, grilled cheese, pancakes, and he started to like avocado too!  He is not crazy about green beans but working on that. I still give him 3 bottles a day and haven't tried to wean him off of that yet.  He LOVES his bottle.  He starts wimpering if he even sees it.  I love snuggling with him when he takes his bottle so I'm a little sad that this season is almost over.  My very active, squirmy baby won't sit still in my lap for long, so I will miss it.  He refuses to take a sippy cup but we are working on that.

Milestones:  The big news this month is he is actually crawling on his hands now!  It all started when I took him outside and being true to his nature he did not just want to sit still...he wanted to crawl.  Since he normally army crawls, he realized quickly that it was quite uncomfortable to army crawl in the grass so he slowly but surely started crawling on his hands.  After I brought him inside, of course he went back to his fast army crawl, but now he does both.  He crawls on his hands most of the time, but when he wants to go fast, nothing will stop his army crawl.  It's actually super cute to watch him crawl normal now as I'm so not used to seeing him do it!

He's also pulling up on everything, and I mean everything....furniture, toys, doors, the wall, chairs, other small kids and even the dog.  He cruises around furniture fast and will barely be holding  on.  I've also seen him stand up without holding on a few times now.  I really can't wait for him to walk, but I'm trying to be patient and not push it too much :)  He doesn't seem to like it  when I try to make him walk with me while holding his hands.  He sits down and looks at me like "mom, it's so much easier to just crawl there."  Maybe by 13 months he will be walking?  We shall see....

Oh and I can't forget that he got his first haircut this month!  He was getting a little shabby and after 3 people mistaken him for a girl, I thought it was time.  We also had our family pictures and his first birthday party so I wanted him to look all cute for that.  He definitely looked like a little boy afterwards!

Likes:  Playing peekaboo (he will cover his eyes with his hands when we say peekaboo, cutest.thing.ever), taking all the pillows off the couch, taking the books off the book shelf, opening and closing doors, pulling all the DVDs out of the cabinet, playing in the tupperware shelf, taking clothes and shoes out of his dresser....hmm do we see a common theme?  Who needs toys when these are his favorite things to do?  He also loves walks/runs in the stroller and swinging.

Dislikes/Struggles:  All of sudden Cooper has decided that the HATES being in the shopping cart of any kind.  Grocery Store, Hobby Lobby, Party City, Target, you name it and he hates being in the cart. This has taken me by surprise since he used to love it and sit perfectly looking around.  The past few times I have taken him in a cart, I've had to carry him the rest of the time.  And let me tell you, he is heavy!  I really hope this passes because I used to love running errands with him and now I feel trapped in my house and not able to get things done during the day.

It's still hard to believe that I have a one year old now!  We had such a fun weekend celebrating his birthday so stay tuned for his birthday party post.