Max- One Year

This post will pick up after Max's 10-month mark and catch us up to the present :)

Sleeping

Max continues to sleep well, though he has had some episodes of not sleeping well over the past several months, either due to teething, illnesses or who knows what.  His "ideal" bedtime is 7 PM now, but he can stretch it later for sure.  He typically wakes around 6 AM, but it's not unusual for it to be 30 minutes sooner or later (often Jesse wakes up around 5:30 and this makes Max wake up, too...we're working on this one).  He takes two really good naps.  Up until recently they continued to be about 2 hours each, but now they seem to be shortening a bit.

Eating

Somewhere around 11 months Max dropped down to only nursing about 3 times per day (first thing in the morning, before his afternoon nap and at bedtime), but there are days here and there where it is more and that is fine.  He eats a cup of yogurt for his breakfast, which I give him right before his morning nap, but he also gets a little bit to eat while we eat (like some cheerios or some pancake if that's what we're having) first thing in the morning.  He is a good lunch eater, too, but dinner is hit or miss, depending on what I fix.  He has gotten more picky than he was a month or so ago.  His favorites right now seem to be grapes, yogurt, pizza, anything Italian (lasagna, ravioli, spaghetti) and tacos (he loves the taco meat and beans).

Milestones

I think he started pulling up on furniture between 10 and 10.5 months and a week or two later he was cruising around.  Last week he grabbed our giraffe riding toy and just started walking all over the room with it quite confidently, so maybe walking isn't terribly far off.  He has seemed interested in trying to walk to me a few times but hasn't actually tried it yet.  I am pretty sure that he is not going to crawl; he really just prefers to scoot around on his bottom everywhere and he has gotten quite good at it.  It doesn't hinder him at all.  Whenever he gets up on all fours from a sitting or lying position, he immediately goes straight to his bottom and begins scooting.  He looks like a little monkey.

He does lots of babbling and does this really cute thing where he changes his intonation and sounds like he's asking us questions.  He says "mama", "dada", "dete" (Jesse) and has said some other words but not super consistently ("water", "door", "ball", "bye bye", "hi" and "turtle").

Temperament

I think we may have another strong-willed one.  He gets very mad when we take things away from him or redirect him away from something he shouldn't be playing with.  I don't remember Jesse getting upset when other kids took things from him at this age, but boy does Max hate it when Jesse takes toys from him.  The upside is that he is learning to defend himself at a much younger age and he doesn't just sit there and take it.

He is also an explorer, just like his big brother, and gets into EVERYTHING.  The two things he is after most right now are our toilet and our shoes.  If I leave the bathroom door open and Max sees it, he is in there faster than I can come after him.  Today he left the living room while I was reading Jesse a book and I thought I could finish it up quickly and go grab him before he got into anything, but he had already found the (open) toilet and was apparently playing in the water, judging by his wet hands and the wet toilet seat (ugh!!!).

He had a bout with stranger anxiety around 8 or 9 months and still has it to a degree, but he does much better in the church nursery now.  He is less outgoing than Jesse seemed at this age.  He doesn't wave at random strangers on the street or warm up as quickly around new people, but once he feels comfortable he is just as sociable as Jesse was.  He seems to be more of a Daddy's boy than a Mama's boy (opposite of Jesse at this age), but it may be pretty even at this point.

We have to make sure to leave the door to our hall closet closed, especially the side where we keep shoes. It is Max's goal in life right now to eat these shoes.  He managed to catch me at a weak moment one day, though, and I just let him play to his heart's content.

He also loves getting into the pots and pans when given the opportunity.  On this particular day I ran to get the camera because he had actually gotten himself inside the cabinet and was playing happily there, but by the time I got back he had gotten back onto the floor.  Still cute, though.

When the door is closed on the shoe side of the hall closet, Max just manages to find the other side (the toy side) open and he gets to the shoes that way.  Sneaky little dude.