Mischievous Matthew & Silly Lily: 1 year old!

It's really hard to believe that Matthew is a year old today. That year was probably the quickest of my life. I'll post some pictures this weekend from his actual birthday with the family tonight, but it's been a while so I though I'd post a little about what Matt's been up to lately.

Matthew is now walking like a champ, and is starting to work on high speed maneuvering. Occasionally this leads to impact with an object, or the floor, but it's usually not too bad and only results in course correction.

He's also very tall, so he can reach up and get anything that's on the edge of the table or counters. We had to move the babygate to keep him out of the kitchen now. Here he got ahold of Mom's syrup bottle, which provided about 45 minutes of entertainment.

He's getting very verbal now. Last week I heard him get up in the morning, and went to get him from the crib. When I picked him up, he pointed at his changing table and said "Ewwww" (wonder where he learned that) Sure enough, that thing was nasty!

He's go two favorite words, we're not sure why. One is "light" or "liiiiiggghht" as it's apparently pronounced. He'll spend quite a bit of time pointing at the lights wherever we are and talking about them.

The other is "Shoe" or "Shhhooooooe". I don't understand the fascination, but this is a word we hear a LOT. He likes to sneak over and reach through the babygate to steal them, so we have to watch where we leave our shoes or the disappear.

After Christmas we made it to the Cabin for one night, but Matt and Jamie both had a cold, no one got much sleep. Matthew did have some fun with the family though. Here he is "de-binning" all of granDan's newspapers. If there is something in a bin, trash can, bucket, basket, drawer or whatever around here, it clearly needs to come out.

The day after we got back I tried to give him an afternoon nap, he was having none of it, so I let him play for a while. You can guess what happened.

For Christmas I got him a wagon and we went to the local park to see the farm animals. I also took him to Home Depot to get some stuff for the basement in it. For some reason we got some funny looks, but I think he likes it better than his stroller.

Lets get moving!

So the other day Jamie changed his diaper, but he needed some new clothes [three guesses why :)] and put him in the crib for a minute in JUST his diaper, and let him play with her phone or "hone" as it's apparently called. I think we're going to need some better velcro.

Aside from the walking and talking to let us know he's not a baby anymore, his hair is getting really long. Almost time for the buzz cut.

Auntie and Jamie were responsible for this travesty.

And Jamie did this after tub time. I like this 'Doo better.

Matt has also been cutting molars lately, which hasn't been fun sleep wise, but has opened up the possibilities as far as what we can feed him. He got graham cracker the other day and thinks they're cookies, so now constantly asks for "Cook-ahhs".

I don't have any video of this yet, but he's also learned to "High 5" this is one of the few things I've actually tried to teach him that he'll do with any consistency. The other day I was sitting on the couch, just kind of resting my hand on the couch palm down. He reached up, turned my hand over and lifted it, and started slapping it. and said "HI" (he's working on the "five" part).

He's also becoming a little parrot.

The other night at dinner, we were having fish. I cut up some little pieces for him, but they were pretty hot, so I did the parental thing and blew on them a little to cool the off, and unceremoniously tossed them onto his tray and went back to eating my dinner. I look over, and Matt has carefully picked up a piece of fish, and is blowing on it. He picked that up quick.

A day or two later, I burped while eating dinner (yeah yeah I know all of you who know me are so shocked right?) Matt just looks at me and goes "baacchh". The kid learned to fake burp. I'm so proud.

For a while now, he's been walking around, and he'll start saying "tucka-tucka-tucka" and smiling at us. We had no idea what he was trying to say for a while, until Jamie figured out that when we're playing with him and start to tickle him, we say "Tickle-Tickle-tickle". Yep, baby parrot. The other day he was laying on the changing table to get a change, and he reaches over and starts grabbing at my side saying "ticka-ticka-ticka".

Here's some of the verbal skills. If you wonder why they're both filmed in the highchair, it's one of the few place during the day where he's moving slow enough to be filmed.