1 year, 32 weeks

I'm not quite sure what happened but we didn't take many pictures the past few weeks. But things have certainly been happening. Our little guy keeps growing and developing and amazing us. I'm constantly shocked at how much more he understands than I realize.


This morning he banged his finger while I was putting him in the carseat this morning. He held his hand, said "Ow" and held his finger out for me to kiss. It was apparently 2 kisses worth of Ow.


This evening we were upstairs. I was putting together an under-the-bed box, and he was putting a toothbrush in another box. He decided he needed to check out what I was doing. I told him the box would go under the bed. He immediately squatted down and looked under the bed. I think he may have been disappointed in finding only dust bunnies.


He can follow two part instructions. He will pick up his water bottle and put it on the table when we're getting ready for dinner. He throws his diapers away. He heads right to the bathroom when I say it's time to wash his hands, then carries his stool over to the sink, and puts it back when he's finished.

He is enthralled by putting things in containers and taking them out again. And putting them back in. And taking them back out. Ad infinitum. For example, when I saw Deb last weekend she gave me my birthday gift early--a lovely necklace. Little did she know that she was also giving Zack the best gift ever--the gift bag and card board necklace box, complete with the artist's card. He saw it sticking out of my bag as soon as I walked in the house and was then occupied by it for ever. Take the box apart, put the pieces in the bag. Take the pieces out of the bag, put them just so on the tissue paper. Put them back in the bag. Rinse, lather, repeat.


He knows what the telephone ringing means ("Helloooo!"). He's even realized that Rob has a different ring on my cell phone than other calls ("Daddy!"). He's figured out what the doorbell means, too.

He's very affectionate, giving kisses to his bear, to his fox, to dogs that he meets on the playground. After I bring him into bed with us in the morning, he crawls over me, starts giving Rob lots of kisses and, of course, says "Hellooo!"

We usually go to the park or go outside for a walk after I pick him up from daycare. The last walk we took was about an hour long and we went all the way from the back door to the front stoop. There were SOOOO many things to look at and to put in our bucket, take out of our bucket, put back in our bucket, dump over our head--leaves, horse chestnuts, tulip poplar pods. There were ants crawling on the sidewalk. There was a stoop to sit on. It was a good walk.

We joined the local YMCA, mostly so that we'd have a place to take him swimming and to start lessons. Rob took him for the first time last weekend and said that he had a blast. We may have a fish on our hands.


His appetite is as good as always. The past couple days he's been doing really well eating off of his plate and out of a bowl without dumping anything on the floor (I'm sure I just jinxed that.). He's pretty good at stabbing food with a fork, but we're still working on the spoon. He hasn't quite figured out that he can't turn the spoon upside down on the way from the bowl to his mouth.

He's got 4 molars, the 4 front teeth on the top and bottom, and is working on all 4 canines.

We got him a potty, so that he could start getting used to the idea. Here's what he did the first time it was in the bathroom--he marched right in with a book and sat down.


He's a bit of a problem-solver, too. He carries stools to different locations so that he can reach things.


It's getting harder to take pictures of him, both because he moves so much and because he's interested in the camera. The other night we were sitting on the floor and he had to inspect the camera.

So I tried to show him how it worked by taking a picture of his bear. He was pretty fascinated by the way the picture showed up on the camera and then wanted to see the other ones that I'd taken.