I realize I'm over a week late with the Birthday pictures, but here you go. We had a nice time with a small family party. I've been trying to teach him to say how old he is, so far I get a finger gesture half way between pointing, and playing guns with his finger. We'll keep working on it.
Jamie got Matt some excellent balloons or "Booons!".
She also made him a shirt for his first birthday.
Noticing a trend?
Check out the decked out highchair. Pizza was a big hit.
After Matthew kept trying to steal my mallet or (Toooo!) every chance he got, I figured I'd just get him his own. So far the house has sustained minimal damage.
And the cake photos! He played in it, but he was so full of pizza, he didn't eat much.
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.
Our Christmas this year was in stages. We had a Christmas dinner with Ann and the Johnson's the weekend before Christmas so that Ann could see Matt before flying out to Iowa.
Then on Christmas eve we met with the Johnsons again for dinner, then off to see the Chang/Dawson clan and Virnigs. We got up the next morning and went to church, then to Denny's for breakfast. Matthew loves pancake puppies (deep fried pancake batter, yeah, healthy right?) Then to Grandma and GranDan's to open presents.
Jamie and I did our Christmas with Matthew when we got home. While he likes some of the stuff we got him, I think the stuff he got from others he's liked best. I just made a slide show this time. Enjoy.
Yep, he's walking. He went from a few unsteady steps to walking halfway across the living room without thinking about it in around a week. It's hard to catch good video though, he has a tendency to still get frustrated and revert to the crawl. The first clip in the video was the night he first got it figured out.
He's become rather a chatterbox lately too. Jamie counted 24 "words" that he says last night. By far the most frequently heard words are Mama, Dada, and Cool, although Dada seems to be the generic phrase for me, needing a diaper change, or whatever else he doesn't have a word for. Jamie got out the little Sesame Street steering wheel that we've had for a while now, and he's been having a blast with it, it's apparently "Coooolll". (There is unfortunately no volume control).
He remains an excellent eater. Thanks to Isaac for customizing the lyrics to "Sittin' in my Highchair"
Chorus Sitting in my high chair, big chair, my chair,
Sitting in my high chair feeding the cat.
1. Bring on the cheddar, bring on the O's
All the food is stuck to my nose.
Gobble up the cheese and wait for more
Oh, the O's are all o'er the floor!
2. Bring on spaghetti, bits of bread,
There is sauce all o'er my head.
I'm so hungry that Daddy said,
"We can't get this baby fed!"
3. Bring on the runny applesauce
On my pants my sauce I lost
I'm so big, yet Momma said,
"Yes, we'll get this baby fed!"
4. I am full and now I'm done
Over hunger I have won
Now to my toy rack I will dash
To see my cardboard blocks go crash.
Jamie gave him 3/4 of a banana the other day. As you'll see banana is very popular. He did finish it, despite the fact that the camera battery died close to the end.
The other new favorite thing is pointing. At Mom, at the cats, at the toys, at the ceiling in general.
We went to the holiday lights display at the botanical gardens in Bellevue with Drew, Kate and Ben the other night. It was raining a little, but that helped with the crowds.
For the midwest family -
And more pointing.
It's been cold here for the lately, (not midwest cold, but in the teens) so Matt has been getting bundled a lot. Some days he tolerates it better than others.
I haven't forgotten about Ann's request for crawling video. He's not sure footed enough yet that he doesn't enjoy a good speed crawl around the living room. Enjoy.
I realize I'm fired as the baby blogger for not getting these up sooner. We've been turning the basement from nasty storage to baby playroom. Hopefully we'll be done with that soon and Matthew will have a bunch more room to play, which he's gonna need, since he's getting way more mobile.
Thursday we went to the Johnson's for thanksgiving.
Checking out the Christmas Cactus with Grandma.
Not sure the dogs knew what to think about Matthew
Matthew seems to love aquariums. Grandma helped him check out the Tetras.
The next day we met Paul, Linda and Ann at the tree farm so they could pick out a Christmas tree. Matthew had a good time checking out all the trees and found the backhoe especially impressive.
From there we headed to the cabin to meet up with the Virnig clan.
On Sunday we met up with the Chang/Dawson/Walters clans for a second thankgiving dinner. Matthew had a great time playing with the other kids. He and Felix had some fun.
It's a race!
Hi Felix!
Hanging with Ethan
Playing with Felix
Walking with GrandDan
Ouch! That's my hair!
Oohhh!
We tried to get some good pictures of all the kids, but that wasn't happening. Here's what we got.
