12 months. 52 weeks. 365 days. ONE YEAR! Our little baby boy is now a big 1 year old! Most people start calling 1 year olds toddlers, but to me, he is still our baby. 🙂
Month 12:
What a busy busy time of year for our family!
–Peach Valley church camp: Jackson was such a trooper! I don’t know why that should be surprising. He has always just adapted so well to whatever our family was doing. Retreats, camps, late nights, early mornings, youth group all around, traveling to see family, traveling for vacation, etc etc. Jackson has yet to meet a stranger; however, a little bit of stranger anxiety has started to set in. Clinging to Momma and Daddy, and of course Mr. Andrew whom he LOVES (great family friends).
-Meeting baby Grant: Little cousin, baby Grant, was born while we were at camp so we left from camp and drove straight to Houston to meet him! Jackson greeted him with a nice big swat to the face… I wonder what our future will look like when baby Emmalyn makes her arrival in just 2 months!
-Family Vacation: from Houston, we spent two nights at home and then took off for the Pacific Northwest! Flew into Seattle and spent the next 7 days splitting our time between Mt. Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, and North Cascades National Park. This was our first National Park trip in the summer months. The wildflowers were so pretty!! Jackson definitely broke the rules of not destroying flowers in the meadows as he picked and completely demolished a handful. He was also quite upset that we enforced the “take only pictures” rule and did not allow him to take the rocks that he often found and wanted to keep tightly gripped in his little hands. Jackson did outstanding on the 4 hour flights to and from Seattle. On the way to Seattle, we overheard a couple in front of us ask the stewardess if they could move because they didn’t want to sit by a baby… There were no seats to move to, so they were stuck by us! But, Jackson behaved so perfectly. We got several compliments on how well he did. It was definitely a different flight experience than his first two trips at 5 and 6 months since he was mobile this time, but he still did really well. I know he won’t remember the trip, but it made for a lot of great memories for his Daddy and me! And some cute pictures too!
-Discipleship University: our last official bigger youth event of the summer! We got home from vacation for two nights then headed to DU. We got to see lots of friends and make new ones! We also got to catch up on some great grandparent and uncle Micah time, which we all loved.
It has been a GREAT summer but it is SO nice to take a breather and be home for a while! We have spent the last two weeks recovering, catching up at work, preparing for Jackson’s FIRST Birthday Party (!!!), and getting a late start on Emmalyn’s nursery. I had a few unpleasant reminders from my body that I needed to slow down some over the summer. Texas heat, third trimester, and a one year old to chase can wear you down pretty quickly! Thankful for family and friends who were more than willing to pick up the slack for me and make sure I took some breaks.
Since we knew we would be traveling so much over the summer, I had really been putting off any type of sleep training for Jackson. I really was just crossing my fingers and hoping that he would begin sleeping through the night on his own (consistently) before Emmalyn’s arrival. Once we got home from DU, we decided to start the sleep training. I hated it. He woke 3 times crying the first night. Cried for 20 minutes then slept, cried for a couple of minutes then slept, cried for about 10 minutes then slept. I realize it could have been so much harder! I dreaded the next night, but to my surprise he slept all the way through the night! And then again, and again, and again, and now he has slept every night through the night for about 10 days!! He goes down around 9 ish and wakes around 7 ish. One day he slept until 8:30! It’s been wonderful! I just hope it sticks around! 🙂
We took a trip to the San Antonio Zoo on his actual birthday. It. Was. HOT. But he did great. Enjoyed the monkeys, some large swimming pig looking thing (I can’t remember what it was called), the giraffes and the zebras. He also loved the petting zoo part. He didn’t really pay attention to any of the smaller animals. And unfortunately, the elephants were gone because their pens were being repaired. 😦 But, it was fun for his first zoo visit!
Milestones:
-He is now WALKING! On vacation he took one- two steps to me. We got home and he took a few more steps that afternoon. That night he took 14 and hasn’t stopped since! He LOVES to walk! He literally walks circles around the house and is just happy about it!
-Still only two teeth! It makes me nervous to give him many solids (probably more nervous than I should be).
-Sleeping allllll night!!!
-Ditched the bottle and the formula about 2 weeks ago and has done great on sippy cup with whole milk. We are working on the spoutless cup but he doesn’t love it. He does great with a straw cup which we use for water and trying to get him to take some diluted apple juice, but he doesn’t like it.
-First official, intentional word: BALL! Second: Bible! However, he says Ball a lot more than he says Bible (on command). He still says Mamamama and Dadadada. I *think* he knows that is us, but it’s not as clear as Ball.
Jackson’s first birthday party was a sweet success. An afternoon full of family and friends who are family celebrating this precious gift that God has given us.
Jordan made this touching video of clips and memories from Jackson’s First Year…I will always treasure it!
Live Moore Fully 