This little guy had a birthday! He loves being one, he’s not going to lie. He’s a big boy now, and he can climb up the stairs and whine and people will bring him back down. He can stand all by himself. He sleeps all night long and he can eat peanut butter now. Life is good! Except when you try to dress him up. Nobody should have to put up with that!
Martin loved his birthday. Except for the cake. He loved the cake from a distance. Especially the candle part:
It was the eating it part that was a problem. No good:
Maybe next year we’ll put frosting on it or something. Opening presents was great. Throwing wrapping paper around is fun and he even unwrapped part of some of his presents on his own. His sisters were happy to help with the rest.
Martin is growing, growing. He’s been in 12 month clothes for probably a month or six weeks now. He’s so much fun to watch. He loves to pull things out of drawers, buckets, cabinets, between the fridge and the wall, anywhere you can put things. Occasionally he will put something back in a bucket, bin or storage space, but his favorite, by far, is pulling things out.
He’s getting his 1 year molars and those are bugging him some. He mostly sleeps alright still, but he’s a little clingy and cranky. He has learned to stand on his own and when he does, he flings his arms out wide and arches his back like it’s a total thrill to be on two limbs. Either that, or he’s trying to imitate a falling cat. He also can take a few steps. His sisters swear he took 7 once, but I’ve only seen 3 or 4. You can decide if you trust their counting…
Recently he has discovered that he can put smaller things into bigger things. He found a chapstick and was putting it into a small food container the other day. He couldn’t get it in every time and it was fun to watch his concentration as he tried to get the chapstick to go into the container.
He can climb up stairs, but is scared to go back down them, so he usually gets to the top and then turns around and whines or shrieks until someone goes up the stairs and brings him back down. He knows how to go down the stairs, but has fallen down them, so they scare him. And someone is almost always willing to run up the stairs and carry him down, so, why not?
Martin knows how to say one word: yeah. It’s his answer to any question. Avery in particular has a lot of fun with this. “Martin, do you have long blonde hair?” “Yeah.” “Martin, am I your favorite?” “Yeah.” He says it in different tones occasionally, but any time anyone talks to him he answers “yeah.” He understands more, though. For example, the other day Avery was telling me how well she had done on a test at school and I said “Good job!” and Martin started clapping. He loves clapping. He claps for himself all the time, and sometimes he claps for Avery when she does a good job. My favorite is when he claps for himself while he’s eating. For a week or so he would pause in the middle of eating his food to clap for himself. He has also clapped for himself for throwing my socks in the bathtub. He’s working on that self esteem.
Raven 