Details of our baby-tot

Now that we've had Henry's one year checkup, I can write down some stats about him, and other details that I love to put down somewhere where they will never be lost or forgotten amidst all the changes we see each day.  That's why I love this blog, I know I won't lose details if I spill them out in this space.  It's an added bonus that I get to share them with any of you out there who can relate, and in turn share things with me!

Henry at 1 year old-

He is 21 pounds, and 29.5 inches long.  His head is a whopping 47.5cm!  His growth chart looks kind of silly because the nurse at his 6 month check up measured his length and head circumfrence wrong so it looks like he shrunk between 6 and 9 months but got heavier, which obviously isn't the case.  Anyway, he sits at 50% on the growth chart.  Like I mentioned earlier, he is learning to walk, but still prefers speed-crawling or walking holding onto something.  He gets a little ticked when I try to hold just one of his hands, but occasionally he'll let me and for some reason I just love it.  It feels so good to walk hand in hand with my boy, but less so when he's flopping all over the floor and whining in protest.  We'll get there.  When he does walk on his own, it's perfectly wobbly and precious, but he is doing it a little less this week than he was last week.  

He says Dada, Mama, hi, dog, duck (those two sound the same but he knows the animals he's talking about), and just started saying up, and maybe off.  Again those sound the same but he uses them at the right time (when he wants to be picked up, and when he plays the game of taking my glasses off over and over)

His appetite fluctuates but more often than not he eats like a horse!  

Favorites include: blueberry greek yogurt, blueberries, grapes, and strawberries, chicken, avocado, and tofu curry (I cannot tell you how this thrills me, that he wants to eat it as often as I do!)

He is already getting picky about vegetables despite my constant efforts to give him a wide variety of them.  He is pretty disgusted by peas, peppers, broccoli, etc.  He likes corn and asparagus and avocado (we eat a zillion of those each week) so at least it's not every single veggie.  He only eats if he can completely stuff his cheeks full.  As in, his lips  can barely touch each other because there is so much food in his mouth.  It's not ideal, but he insists, so we just watch him very closely.

He's just doing new things constantly and making sense of the world, and has really been letting his attitude shine.  He has a lot of opinions, and he likes to share them.  He has an obsession with the microwave. 

Other big changes in Mr. Henry's world are his sleeping/and breastfeeding schedule.  I have been so conflicted when it comes to my nursing plans.  I think most people tend to start weaning the day time feeds and the night time are the last to go, but I'm taking the opposite approach.  I figure I'll work on the hard stuff first.  He has nights when he sleeps so well and nights when he wakes up like a newborn to nurse, and I went along with it for quite some time because it was fine, he wasn't even a year, we got to snuggle and so on.  But now that he is one I feel more comfortable actively trying to stop those night wakings.  He is often unhappy about waking up, and I want to help him get a full nights rest as well as get some sleep myself.  With a little encouragement from his pediatrician we have made a few changes to our routine around here.  I wanted to do this as gently as possible for him, and of course I thought that Henry would have a fit about it. 

Not the case at all, not yet at least.  The pediatrician suggested that we help him to stop associating breastfeeding with sleeping for starters.  She is fully supportive of nursing for as long as we want but feels we should be helping him to confidently sleep (and I agree).  For as long as he's been here we have nursed right before naps and bed because it's relaxing and easy and worked for us.  For the past couple of days though I am no longer doing it just before sleeping.  I nurse him a little bit before then, and we now read a couple of stories before going in for naps and bed.  To my surprise, for the most part there has not been a peep, not a single care.  At first I couldn't help but to sit there and think, clearly WE are the ones who have been making this so much more complicated than it needs to be.  He usually goes down fairly well after nursing and some rocking, but my hope is that he will put himself back to sleep in the night if he doesn't always think of nursing along with falling asleep.  Going down is not the issue, it's the constant waking and wanting to comfort nurse out of habit.  After a few days of trying he's going down like a dream but still waking at night.  I know it will take some getting used to, and I hope to see a change soon.  It's difficult with him being an older baby, he is always standing when we go in to comfort him, pointing at the door (his room is in our room only separated by a sliding door so he knows just where I am at all times) and has now in the last two days come up with a very clear sign for nursing.  He is able to make his wishes very clear, which only makes it that much harder to distract him.  He loves sleeping in his own bed and his own space, and to be honest I think our beds being so close to each other only makes things more difficult for him.  He generally wakes shortly after I come to bed and I feel fairly certain that this would be much easier for him with a different layout.  We will have to make do with the current set up though and hope that we can break this pattern.