One Year!

Austin is now a one-year-old and he has "graduated" in many areas. He now sits in a front-facing car seat, which he loves! Right now he's in between his sisters since his is the only seat that will fit between theirs. When school is out, I will put him up in the middle row, though he sure does like sitting in between his sisters and hearing them sing their hearts out to the High School Musical sound track!Mostly to save on space, but also so he'll feel more like a big boy, Austin now sits in a booster seat at the table. He likes being able to reach for his sippy cup from the table.

Speaking of sippy cups, Austin enjoys drinking from his sippy cup all the time now, except that he wants nothing to do with whole milk, which makes the weaning process more complicated. Never fear, though, I have had experience with a reluctant weaner before, except Karissa would not even use a sippy cup, or anything else, until she was about 14 months. Kefir was the ticket for her. I bought some Kefir for Austin and put it in his sippy with a dab of whole milk. The first few days he refused to drink it from the sippy, only from the 1 quart container it comes in, which was hilarious to watch him drink from that huge container (unfortunately no one was around to take a picture and I couldn't as I was holding Austin in one arm and the Kefir in the other). Since then (three days ago) he's been taking about one sip more of his Kefir mix each day. And after a two day food strike, he has been eating better again, but not as many table foods, mostly baby food. I'm still nursing him morning and night and I guess I'll be doing that for a little while still until he starts drinking his milk better.

At his well-baby check-up he weighed 20.8 lbs. and was 30 and 1/4 in. long. That puts him in the 10-25th percentile for weight and the 50th for height. I'm not surprised he went down in percentiles, since that's what most nursed babies do and odds are against him for being the biggest kid on the block. The doctor actually had him weighed again, though, since she thought he looked bigger than that, but the second weight was the same.

Besides getting into things (see previous blog), he loves to walk with his walker all over, crawl around pushing his trucks or a ball, the swings at the park, climbing up and down stairs, and watching trucks or anything else that makes noise. He can say "hi" and it sounded like he said "Daddy" one time.

We celebrated his birthday on Memorial Day with some friends and had a bar-b-que. He ate some beans and tortilla chips, tons of watermelon, and his slice of lemon poppy seed cake.

We love our big boy!