The Turners: February 2010

Still so hard to believe that my little munchkin is one!! I took off work today to spend the day with him and we had so much fun just playing and snuggling all day. We went to the doctor first thing this morning for his one year well baby check-up. I'm sure Maddox was thinking, "Good plan, Mom...shots for my birthday!", but he got over it pretty quickly! Maddox is still growing like a weed, which isn't surprising since he is a little garbage disposal. He weighed in at 22 lbs (40th percentile) and was 29 3/4 inches long (50th percentile) so he is right on target for his age since he's tripled his birth weight. He had to get his toe pricked too to test his iron levels. He didn't mind the toe pricking part so much as he did the lady squeezing the life out of his toe trying to fill two vials of blood. He got a little agitated during that part. He also was very upset to have to have 4 more shots today, but I was able to console him pretty quickly. It does break my heart to have to lay him on the table and watch him get so upset while they are sticking him. I just want to do what mommies do best and make it all better, but those nurses make it hard.

Dr. Miller checked him out today and answered a lot of questions and gave us a lot of advice. We are beginning to transition to whole milk. Maddox drank a sippy cup full today and seemed to like it okay. It was no bottle though. He sucks that thing down no matter what's going on around him. With the sippy cup of milk he would take a sip and then chew on the rim, of the cup throw it down, and then start the process back over. We are going to keep slipping the milk in there so we can get solely on whole milk pretty soon hopefully. It should be a lot cheaper that's for sure! We are also going to be starting to drop his bottles which is probably going to be a challenge since he is obsessed with his bottle. When I say obsessed, I'm not exaggerating. He literally is beside himself when he sees you making it and he can't wait to get it. He climbs up your leg and whines and moans and waves his little hands in the air. It is pretty funny to watch.

Maddox isn't walking on his own just yet, but I doubt it will be too much longer before he is. He loves to walk holding on to furniture and the walls. He walks just about everywhere, but he just is too afraid to let go yet. Every now and then he'll let go and stand for a second, but he's not willing to try that first step just yet. These past few days he has started to get upset if he can't get somewhere by walking. He a big bouncy ball that he loves to play with (go figure he has a lot of expensive toys and his favorite is a $1.50 bouncy ball, haha) and sometimes when it rolls out into the middle of the room, he drops to the floor and puts his head down and cries because he can't walk to it. It's kind of sad, but he usually gets over it pretty quickly. It's just funny to see his little temper start to shine through and he definitely is developing quite a temper.

Lately, Maddox has been waking up during the night too, usually around 10:00 after he's been down a few hours. I talked to the doctor about it today and we're pretty sure it's night terrors that he's having because he cries out and he almost looks like he's in a daze or still sleeping when I go up there. Usually we can calm him down and lay him back down with his paci and his giraffe or tiger blankie and he's fine though. Hopefully he'll grow out of this pretty soon.

We now have another tooth breaking through. Hooray...it's about time! We have been waiting on some teeth to join those bottom two for quite a while. You can finally see where his front tooth has broken through. That should help with his eating, not that a lack of teeth has slowed him down any. One thing about Maddox for sure is that he is an eater. He will eat and eat and eat and he eats just about anything you give him. I typically have to cut him off because I sometimes don't think he will ever stop himself (I'm sure he would...he just seems so little to be eating that much). He will eat a whole sandwich for lunch plus a fruit cup amongst other little snacks. It just seems crazy the amount that he eats! We have been off baby food for quite a while. Maddox was never a fan of any of those Gerber Graduate foods. I guess once he got a taste of the real thing he didn't want to go back to those bland foods.

The picture at the top is one that Blake snapped of him on Sunday during his portrait session. We had his one year pictures made and he had a little personal smash cake for his pictures. It definitely wasn't anything to look at seeing how it was a homemade box cake with canned frosting and sprinkles, but he absolutely loved it (and it didn't take too long for it to be a pile of crumbs and frosting on his face anyway). He was extremely serious the entire time he ate it and as soon as he started on it he was focused on that and only that. I think he was trying to shovel in as much as he could before we took it away. We tried very hard to get him to smile, but it was pretty much impossible to distract him away from his cake. He went to town and he loved every minute of it!! I am sure he will do the same at his party on Saturday.

Happy Birthday sweet boy!

We finally got some real snow on Friday! Last time it was forecast, it was a big bust, but this time we had a lot (for Alabama that is) of snow. We got out of school at 11:00 which is always a huge plus, and Blake even got to leave work at lunchtime too. Maddox enjoyed watching the snow out the window. It really snowed hard for a long time and was so pretty to watch. We even went out to play for a little bit. Not being able to walk made it a little hard to get Maddox in the snow because I knew he'd be sopping wet if he sat and crawled around in it, so we loaded him up in his wagon and rode around the yard while the snow was still falling. He had a lot of fun just taking everything in and of course it was fun for us to watch him too. We can't wait to see him throwing snowballs next time!

And here is Maddox on his last snow day. Last time we really had snow, Maddox was just 5 days old! Hard to believe how much he has changed since that last snowfall...