Always and Forever: And he's ONE!

I could say something like, "wow I don't know where time went!" But, it was a long, busy, hard year, and we felt every day of it! It has most definitely been a year. :)

And we have a one-year old little boy on our hands!

(He turned 1 almost 2 weeks ago.)

Spinning on the chair at the doctor's office

Size:

Head circumference: 47.8 cm - (91st %tile)
Height: 31 inches - (88th %tile)
Weight: 25 pounds - (93rd %tile)

Hair length: growing at the speed of light. He got a haircut about 6 weeks ago and it's almost in his eyes again.

He has two little teeth (bottom front) finally! They came in a few weeks before his first birthday. He's working on the top two, but they, like the first two, are proving to be slow.

His 12 month clothes are really just in is drawer still because I'm not organized enough to know where I am going to pack them away yet. Typically he's in size 18 month and up. He wears a lot of t shirts and shorts these days, and most of them are about 18 month and 2T.

He loves lounging while he "drives".
(Our apartment is that half-open sliding screen door on the very right, and the building that extends up and to the right of that.)

Tired days-- I think we sent this picture to Bryan mid-day. (You may see a theme with my hair: humidity-induced frizz no matter if it's straight or curly lol.)

Tired boy watching a show while I do something or other right before his nap.

Lincoln's favorite things:

- Being outside. It's nice to have a playground for a backyard.

- Swinging

- Playing with (and trying to eat) leaves, grass, twigs, and sand

- Airplanes!

- Riding plastic playground vehicles

- Playing with other kids

- Veggie straws (like chips but hopefully healthier), graham crackers, and really any food

Daddy decorated Lincoln with straws.

- Games: peekaboo, "where's momma's nose!...",

- Biting everything.

- Repeating everything we say. (e.g., Me: "Let's go upstairs!" Lincoln: "Up-tah!")

- READING. I think if we went outside and read all day he'd be one happy kid. He loves to have us read to him, to sit and read himself books on his own, to flip through my chapter books, etc.

- Chasing us (with help from the other parent of course because he will only do it while running as fast as his feet can carry him).

- Coloring and drawing

- Watching and listening intently as we count to 5, and cheering and clapping when we get there.

- Clapping

- Singing. He likes to listen to us sing. He LOVES to be the one singing. He sings whenever we sing, whenever we open the music books at church, etc.

- Playing the piano. He does not like when our hands get in his way. He likes to play along to the percussion on our keyboard. He also turns the pages to the music intermittently as he plays. Funny kid.

- Shows: Sesame Street, Arthur, Wild Kratts, ABC's and Such

- Dancing

- Playing with and trying to eat anything that's off limits (cords, remotes, napkins, paper...)

- Animals: His favorite in person are dogs. His favorite in books are T-Rex's and Elephants. He makes the sounds for all three. :)

- Walking, walking, walking. He can't quite do it by himself yet, but it's more because he gets scared of letting go than anything. If we trick him and he doesn't realize it right away, he does quite well staying up and moving.

- People: he loves playing with other kids especially

- Taking baths and showers and SPLASHING.

- Letters: He loves playing with his magnet letters, copying the sounds of letters, singing the ABC's while we touch each letter, pointing at letters on our shirts one by one to get us to tell him what they are, and saying "A" whenever he sees one. He seems to know that one already.

- Laughing and doing things he knows will make us laugh

- Seeing pictures and watching videos of himself. (He gets laughing SO HARD at videos of himself.)

- Deconstructing my block towers one block at a time

- Skyping with family

- Opening presents

- Pointing at pictures of Jesus and saying "Juh!" (Kind of sounds like "Chuh".)

- Whisks.

- Making really loud, excited noises. He has 2 volumes... loud, and asleep.

...because it's easier to drag these giant blocks around than walk on your own.... hm... (Playing in a toy room in the graduate student center.)

Happy birthday!

A great birthday present-- I can get about 5 minutes worth of stuff done! "A" is his favorite letter. He always finds it.

Trying to wear my "onion-cutting lab goggles".

Mobility:

He can crawl but doesn't do it much. He prefers to walk.

He loves walking around holding on to our hands, furniture, etc. If we distract him and sneakily remove our hands he can stand for a little bit or even take a few steps on his own. As soon as he realizes our hands are gone he freaks out, stops walking, and reaches back to grab ahold of our legs or hands like he's going to fall off a cliff if he doesn't.

This little sick boy wouldn't sleep very well (he was stuffed up) so I said "bag it" and he and I drove across California to get fish sauce and jasmine rice at the Asian market. Lincoln wore his pajamas. :)

He would like to be outside 100% of the time.

Talking:

He says everything... "bed", "bath", "dog", "hi", "high chair", "Jesus", "book", "ball", "dad", "mom", "lamp", "straw"... and the list goes on... it's awesome. He speaks to us in full sentences, we just don't know what he's saying lots of the time. :) He'll say very-complex sounding sentences complete with voice inflections and pauses, and then stop and look at us like "don't you understand?" It's hilarious.

He is also really good at understanding what we are saying. He understands and follows directions from us that I really don't expect him to understand yet! It's impressive.

Escondido Village gave every family a free pumpkin today, so we went over to the field to get our pumpkin! Unfortunately it was right when Lincoln should have been taking a nap. Fortunately he thought it was a giant field of things to kick so he methodically walked up to one pumpkin at a time, kicked it (in some cases rolling it a bit), walked over it, and went on to the next pumpkin.