My Baby is One!

Wow, I cannot believe that Nate is a year old! He was born a year ago on May 30, a whopping 9 pounds 2 oz. He has continued to grow so fast this year, it is hard to remember him ever being small. At his one year check-up, he was 24 pounds, 2 ounces (65 percentile) and 31 inches tall (75 percentile). If I don't watch out, I am sure I will blink twice and he will be all grown up!
He is such a joy to us! I really have enjoyed having this baby and I can honestly say I have enjoyed all of the little moments with him! He is generally a happy baby, but he is also so loving and sweet that we just love picking him up and squeezing us to him!

This past month he has really started to prepare to walk. He isn't there yet, but he will stand up in the middle of the room ALL of the time. If I stand him up next to me he will take a few steps, up to 5 of them, but I have only see him take steps on his own a few other times.

He's very expressive. He says Ellie- "Eh-E!", Daddy- "Daa!", Adam- "Ada", more- "mo", this (which means a lot of things) - "Dis", and Mommy- "mama" (usually really sad). I can't recognize what he says for Michael yet, but I'm sure that is forthcoming. He loves to blow us kisses, if we kiss him, he immediately breaks into the kiss blowing.

He is very curious and independent. He will go off to explore and play independently for several minutes at a time. In fact, I often have to find him or get one of the kids to find him to make sure he is not in trouble. He loves the sandbox and will crawl out and play in it with or without his siblings there. He has started climbing UP the slide, which is frightening to me, but he loves to slide back down on his tummy. He has learned to go up and down stairs perfectly, the only time he has ever fallen, Ellie had something to do with it. (But I don't think she pushed, just messed up his rhythm). He is also very proficient at emptying the contents of cupboards, just like a little tornado moving through the house.

He really likes to climb on whatever he can find. This motorcycle was no good for pictures because he kept climbing up on the seat and dangling precariously from the top....no sitting for him.

Today, we had cake and ice cream for him! He thought the candle was something you stick your finger on, and got burned. But then, he really enjoyed his cake. After he stuck his fingers in for a couple of seconds, he kept leaning over and sticking his face right in the cake so that he could get more. Unfortunately, my camera has a delay so I couldn't catch it on film.

By the end, he had eaten a lot of the cake and was ready to throw it on the floor (to see how gravity works).He also really enjoyed his presents! We had a hard time pulling him away from one present so he could look at the next one. He got some fun toys (most of which had been pulled out of storage from when the older boys outgrew them)!

Happy Birthday Nate! We really love you!