One Year of Max!

Actually, it's been 13 Months!

I wish I had written a post before Max’s first birthday to celebrate this tiny child’s one year of sun rotation. But, you know, work work work work work work. I had a little writer's block early in the year and then took on two consulting projects, which made life a little more busy!

I think with my writers block I started to get concerned about what I was saying. Was it insightful enough? Useful to other parents or wannabe parents. Today, I’m writing on this inspiration of this book, Born in Lockdown from Mothership Writers in the UK.

I read an article about it on the BBC and was so intrigued. The website says the aim of the project was to “encourage writing for pleasure and purpose: to find, amidst the clamour, the space to hear one’s own voice.”

That’s why I write! For pleasure and purpose. To share my voice.

One of the things that often impedes my ability to finish a blog post is the feeling I have that it should be long and full of information. So here is my mission today, to finish this post in 15 minutes and post it online within 5 more. Here I go!

One Year of Max!

Max’s first birthday was March 18. We celebrated with a pancake breakfast (a special baby recipe). He loved the stack of pancakes and lots of strawberries on his plate. Max is a pretty good eater. We let him explore his food and feed himself with his hands mostly. He sometimes uses little spoons and forks and he’s been getting really good lately at scooping up things like yogurt and getting it into his mouth. 

They grow up so fast.

Blink and you’ll miss it.

We can’t imagine life without him.

Seriously though, he has grown so much, so fast. When we met, he was just a tiny ball of mush. I mean, when he came home from the hospital he slept, fed, slept, and repeated. That’s all he could manage. Since then he has:

Developed vision

Developed sense of smell

Learned to drink from a breast, and from a bottle, and more recently from a tiny glass. 

Learned that he had arms, legs, hands, and feet. Oh wow! What a day.

Learned to hold his head up on his own!

Went from army shuffle, to crawling, to walking aided and almost to walking independently.

He learned how to grab things with his hands, and his fingers in a pincer grip.

He learned how to eat solid food, and how to feed himself. 

He learned to get himself to sleep without me or Steve. He knows how to self-soothe when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

Now when he wakes up, instead of crying he calls for Mum.

Learned to pull up to stand, and cruise along furniture. 

He can climb up and down stairs.

He recently has been able to put toys back in a box, or place the balls in the slide so they spin down again.

He also grew from 6lb to nearly 20lb!

That’s not even half of it! But it’s enough to say, the concept that they grow up so fast sure is true. A few of my friends have little babies now (between 1 and 4 months old). I see photos of their babies sleeping in their arms and I sometimes think, oh Max never really did that. Then I look through my photos of him and there are plenty of similar images with our sleeping baby on Steve’s chest, or curled up against my shoulder. I must have blinked and missed it! They grow up so fast! Treasure every moment!

I was going through his old clothes to give some to a neighbor and found the onesie he wore in the hospital. I cried.

Movement

Max is moving around like a little speed demon. He crawls so fast. Most of the time you hear his little hands slap on the floor and can track where he’s heading! But he’s also showing some interest in walking. He really loves being walked around holding my hands, or his little walker truck toy.

One of his new tricks is to climb up into our bed. The frame has a padded soft ledge and he uses that to get his knees up first. It’s very cute now that he comes to say goodmorning to whichever one of us is lucky enough to have a lie in. 

He’s also playing with toys in new ways. He is more interested in sorting items; pulling them out and putting them back in something. He does this with toys and his neatly arranged drawers of clothes! Thanks Max. It’s great to watch these developments. 

I think the challenge is to be really aware of what’s happening for him and what types of activities and environments are best to make available. We try to follow Montessori practices, which is all about observing the child and giving them the right environment for them to learn independently, rather than trying to teach them everything. 

Working does prevent me from noticing as much I think. We have a nanny for 10 hours. She is really lovely and Max likes her a lot. He definitely gets upset if he sees I’m around. She also said that every 30 minutes he goes to the bedroom door and says “Mom” and then she needs to distract him again with a toy. Aww my heart. 

Flower

For the past few months, Max has been growing his vocabulary. Steve and I had a game going that we both tried to encourage Max to say the opposite parent’s “name.” So I tried to repeat “daddy” and Steve encouraged “mommy.” It was fun because it was a win-win situation. Max said “Mom” first, so Steve won, and I won also because it’s been really sweet. 

Language is a funny thing. Babies often will pick up a word and then stop using it for a while. He said Porter, Daddy, previously and now we hardly hear it. 

We also learned that sometimes babies over apply their words. As an example, for a while Max called both me and Steve mommy. I think he associated that word with me, but then it also became associated with us as his parents. Now he’s saying daddy more when addressing Steve.

A few weeks ago Max learned the word Flower and it must be his favorite. He says it ALL THE TIME! We think he associates it with everything green, and with the outdoors. He might say it at the back door when he wants to go out into the garden. Or when we hiked last weekend he said it constantly when all we could see was the green ferns and grass. But he also says tree, which is a cute one.

Steve was told by a fellow parent: you spend the first year trying to get them to talk and walk, then the next twenty telling them to sit down and shut up! 

It’s been an amazing year of growth for this tiny human and I can’t wait to see where he’s at when he turns two! But for now I’m going to slow down and enjoy every single moment I get with him, because if I’m not careful I will blink and miss it all.

And that’s my 15 minutes.