Okay, so we’re almost at 13 months now. I’m a bit behind. I blame viruses and bacteria. Anyway, Sean turned 1 on January 27. We didn’t have a huge celebration seeing as how all family is far away and we don’t really have family friends here either. So just the three of us.
We had some trouble getting our standard monthly photo. Someone is *very* mobile now, and not at all interested in sitting still for the camera.
“Okay, you’re sitting! You’re happy! I’ll just get out of the way, and…”
– CLICK –
(Sigh…)
Here are some birthday pictures that are *not* the standard couch photo, but are more representative anyway.
I made chocolate beet cake for Sean’s birthday. It’s a nice, not-too-sweet, moist cake that I really like. (And it’s got several beets in it, so it’s healthy, too!) And we sang “Happy Birthday.” Sean eyed us warily. (“What are you guys up to?”)
“Uh, Mom, what IS this?”
Nom, nom, nom!
And a present from the JLGA Hardts! (Yes, I was rather ill.)
The Saturday after Sean’s birthday we took him to Gymboree as a special fun thing. It was interesting — a bit too structured and manic for my tastes, but Sean had a good time (before he got a bit overwhelmed and just sat there).
Sean’s first molar (his front bottom left one) finally erupted in mid-January. It was a rough journey. For about a month, he was in on-and-off tooth pain, and we swore for that whole month that the next tooth was just a few days away. Except for the very first tooth, this molar was definitely the worst. We had about two weeks of severe pain (=sleep-disturbing) for this one versus the one week for the first tooth and just a few days for the ones in between. Molars are brutal — they’re so big and they’ve got four sharp points each that need to pierce through the surface. January’s molar was particularly nasty because Sean was sick for a bunch of it, so he had mouth pain and was completely congested on top of it. Poor guy.
Let’s go to the mouth diagram:
So the January molar is in orange. Now, mid-February, it looks like we’ve got January Molar’s partner making her way in. The February molar is in red. He’s in pain again, and the first of the four tooth peaks is through. It’s funny to have these teeth come in and not yet the canines; there’s a gap between Sean’s front teeth and the molars. And the lack of molars on his right side means that he closes his mouth funny — a little bit crooked. But I bet the other two first-year molars aren’t far behind… (Joy.)
Just a couple weeks after the first step, Sean was walking around without even thinking about it. He wasn’t always steady, and he fell regularly, but he could also walk and walk and walk without much help. Here he is on January 15.
Sorry for the lull. Sean and I have been sick for a long time. Combo of never ending colds and bacterial infections. Not fun. I appear to be on the mend (fingers crossed). But poor Sean is down for the count with a new set of ear infections. Luckily I’m the one who does the blogging or you might have to wait even longer…
Anyway…
It might not be a surprise, but Sean really likes to eat. Everything I’ve read seems to say, “as babies become mobile and then start walking, they lose interest in eating because everything else is so exciting. So don’t worry when your toddler seems to eating hardly anything at all.” Right. Well this doesn’t apply to Sean, who is a food-lover. (We do eat good food here.) We’ve been trying to cook dinners for everyone that Sean can eat directly, or eat with a little extra cutting up. A few weeks ago Ben made his lovely Spinach Rice Casserole, which we enjoy from time to time. Well. We put some in front of Sean. He tried it. And then starting gobbling the stuff up! When we had leftovers a couple days later, he again devoured it. And so Ben made it again last week. Snarf! Definitely a favorite Sean food. Here he is in action:
On 12/31/2010, Sean took his first unassisted step. On 1/1/2011, Sean took his first set of multiple steps. Within two weeks, he was walking around the library, starting and stopping at will, standing, looking around, choosing a direction mid-walk. He was squatting to pick things up off the floor without holding on to anything. And he was carrying large items around with a fair amount of ease.
During that first week, though, this was his favorite game: walk to Mommy, hug, walk to Daddy, hug, repeat. (Our comments in this video stem from the fact that he was doing this game really well until we started recording him, so it took several tries to get it on video…)
Sean likes airports. He likes them a lot. (Which was a good thing over vacation because we spent a lot of time in them, as all our flights were delayed.) Airports are the biggest playgrounds he’s seen, complete with interesting objects, lots of people to smile at, and — ooh! — escalators.
