Welcome to our (not so clean) home!

If you were to step into our home at any point in the day when Jesse is awake, this is what you would find (multiply the number of small objects on the floor by 10):

Yes, you would see that cute little boy named Jesse, but you would also see (perhaps trip over) an array of toys. I am exaggerating (slightly), but some days I feel like I am just constantly picking up toys.

Jesse begins his day by going to his toy bins and methodically throwing as many toys as possible onto the floor. Sometimes he just picks up a whole bin of toys and chunks the entire thing across the room.

Then, he might find one toy he wants to play with for a minute or two before proceeding to do the same with all of our things (he doesn't get very far in that endeavor, though, before one of us stops him).

A term I learned in my high-school chemistry class has been running through my mind a lot these days: entropy. It's a measure of the amount of disorder. This kid creates a high level of entropy, or in other words, a high level of disorder, wherever he goes.

Lucky for me, it really doesn't take very long to put everything back where it belongs. He's a pretty fun kid, too, so that works in his favor as well :)

He's a Walker!

Jesse has been taking lots of steps in between pieces of furniture, but he would rarely walk to one of us on command until tonight. James got home early today, and Jesse decided he would take off walking. He was standing by the coffee table and was trying to get James' attention (he was at the computer) with a big, huge grin on his face and then he took off walking towards me. From that moment on, he has been walking back and forth between the two of us and even out into the open room. He loves it!

Valentine's Play Date

Jesse and Alyse had a little play date this morning. I just had to snap some pictures since they were both dressed in their Valentine's attire. Jesse has a long way to go in making impressions on girls. Right now he gets their attention by chasing and rough pats on the head.

Playing quite nicely side-by-side:

This was Jesse getting really excited about the camera that I was holding:

Here they are playing with my phone, which they used this afternoon to call/text numerous people in my address book. The ironic thing was that somehow 3 out of 4 grandparents were contacted in some way, either by text or phone call.

Here is Jesse taking some steps this afternoon:

And playing peek-a-boo with me:

13 Months

Jesse has changed so much over the past month. He is more and more our little boy and less and less our little baby. Here's what he's been up to over the past month:

• Eating three good meals per day, a small snack in the late afternoon, and nursing three times. After dropping two nursing sessions over the past month, he has had an increased appetite for solids and began to eat good dinners. He loves his cow's milk, especially at dinnertime, and is probably drinking about 8 oz. per day. He has continued to show interest in eating veggies (mostly peas, green beans, yellow squash and zucchini). Some new foods are clementines, strawberries, ground beef, salmon, pizza and lasagna. He loves almost any fruit (with the exceptions of blueberries and applesauce), puts away beans like crazy, and also really continues to love cheese, yogurt and turkey (but the turkey must be smoked, not roasted).
• Some new words are duck, bath, water, two and beans.
• He has a new-found obsession with the garbage truck. It stops under his bedroom window every morning between 7:30 and 8:00 to load all the trash from our building. We usually hear it beeping as it pulls up to the trash room, and so I take Jesse and stand him up in the window so that he can watch the man dump all the trash into the truck. Then we wave bye-bye to it. He loves it! The past two days I have asked Jesse if he wants to see the garbage truck and he gasps and gets this really excited look on his face and starts looking for it.
• He has gotten pretty bad about throwing food off of his tray. He looks up immediately to see what kind of reaction he is going to get. When I scold him he just smiles, but sometimes he gets pretty upset when James gets onto him. Keeping less food on his tray usually helps the problem.
• He is so close to walking. He stands alone all the time--not on purpose, but because he gets distracted by a toy in his hand and doesn't even realize he's doing it. Just this week he has consistently been taking steps between pieces of furniture. I think he just needs a little more confidence/motivation. Right now the knee walking seems to be serving him just fine (he is able to keep toys in his hands, yet doesn't have to worry about falling).
• He is more and more snuggly these days and always snuggles up to me when I sing to him before his naps and at bedtime. Also, over the past few days, I find him randomly laying on the floor on his belly, or with his head resting on the couch, as if he's just taking a short little break.
• His favorite toys are my phone and keys. He will literally play with the keys for hours, taking them with him wherever he goes.

Approximate daily routine at one year:

6:30 Wakes up and nurses

8:30 Eats breakfast

9:00 Morning nap

11:30 Lunch

1:30 Nurses/Afternoon Nap

4:00 Snack

5:30 Dinner

6:30 or 7 Nurses/Bedtime

Taking a break from his exhausting life:

How a Jesse Eats Bread

Jesse recently began refusing the tiny bite-sized pieces of bread I was giving him, so I decided to see if he would be more enthusiastic about eating larger pieces. I wouldn't go as far as saying that he gobbled it up, but he definitely acted more interested in it.

Kisses

A couple weeks ago I started doing a "baby swap" with a friend of mine here in the building. She takes Jesse for an hour or so every week so that I can get out and run errands or just have some time to myself, and I do the same with her daughter Alyse, who is a couple months older than Jesse. It has been so nice to have a little time to myself each week and to have the freedom to get out and do something without a baby in tow. I am so grateful for good friends here in our building.

Yesterday morning Alyse came over to play. The two babies have lots of fun "playing" together. Here is some proof. Jesse is being uncharacteristically gentle in this video. His usual way of interacting with Alyse involves lots of rough pats on the back and face. We are working on understanding what "gentle" means.

Pizza Night

Two people in particular (my Mom and Dad) have been telling me to post more pictures of Jesse, so in order to keep myself out of trouble, here are some more pictures.

We gave Jesse some pizza recently (in my defense it was pretty healthy as far as pizzas go--homemade with a whole wheat crust) and he really loved it. The funny thing is, as I looked over all these pictures, he isn't smiling in a single one. In fact, he looks very scared/upset/angry in them. I promise, he really did like the pizza and he made it very clear when he wanted more. You might notice that there is hardly any pizza to be seen on his tray--that is because he gobbled it up faster than we could put it on there.

In these last two pictures, he was actually pretty upset because he got a taste of pepperoni and this was NOT a pleasant experience for him.