Month Thirteen

Liam,

Today, you turned thirteen months old!  But where to begin!?! It's been a very busy month and it sure has flown by. We've had a ton of fun though! With it now getting into the holiday season we've been busy with all sorts of Halloween festivities; from picking out your pumpkin, to carving it, and picking out your costume. I love Halloween and I love that I get to share all the traditions I did as a kid with you. I can't wait to get you all dressed up and take you trick-or-treating!

Now that you're walking, you sure keep us busy. When we go to the store, if we don't put you in the cart you want to walk all over the place. And when I say all over the place, I mean ALL OVER THE PLACE! You don't really listen yet when we ask you to "come this way" meaning come with us. You have your own agenda and want to explore. I mean what kid wouldn't! So when you do get to explore we just go with it and follow you around. You like to go for walks in general so when we're at home you'll point to the door when you want to go outside. We have a little park area in front our house with a sidewalk all around it and you'll just cruise up and down it.

You're getting better and better at communicating! You point at things you want and will say something at the same time. Though we can't understand what you're saying yet, it's cute just listening to you talk to yourself. You say momma and dadda all the time now. I look forward to picking you up everyday because as soon as I get there and you see me, you'll point at me and say momma. It melts my heart! You are also learning how to express your frustrations when you don't get what you want. You'll stand at our feet and cry and grab at our legs trying to get us to pick you up. But when we're busy and can't do it at that very moment, you'll throw a little bit of a fit and fall to the ground and cry. I'm not going to lie, it's hard watching you do this. All I want to do is pick you up but I know I can't because then you'll think I'll pick you up any time you do this.

Some other big changes is you only drink whole milk now. Yay, no more formula! You are also down to one nap a day though on occasion you'll still take two naps depending on your mood. You actually made this big change at daycare because you're going to be moving to the next room in a month or two and you only get one nap in that room. So we've started to give you one nap at home too! With a big change like this we noticed you were getting a little cranky in the evenings so we changed your bedtime to 7:30 instead of 8pm. This really seems to help! We still give you a night time bottle so the next big task is to not give you bottle right before bed anymore. But I think that's a task for next month...

Happy thirteen month birthday sweet little boy! You bring a smile to my face, every day, every hour, every minute, every second!  I love you so much!

Love,
Momma

A Day with Grandpa Mike

A couple weeks ago you got to hang out with Grandpa Mike for the WHOLE day! He had a full day of fun planned for you which included going to the visitor's center at the RMEF and of course seeing Nana B. You were quite the hit there too and you loved looking at all the animals!

"Liam, where's the elk?"

Look at that big smile!

Our future hunter

Pumpkin Carving

Helping clean out the guts

Daddy's turn - carving out the pumpkin!

Loving your spider pumpkin

All lit up - nice work daddy!!

Pumpkin Patch & More

Today we took you to the "Missoula Maze", a popular local Halloween attraction. They have a big maze and a couple little kids mazes, a pumpkin patch, and even some animals.

Checking out the farm animals

One of the biggest pumpkins there

Having fun in the pumpkin patch

An excited little boy!

Found a pumpkin

"Yep, I want this one!"

1st Birthday Party

We celebrated your 1st birthday on Saturday!! It was great because we just did a low key get together at our house with family and friends. It was the perfect day with great food, great people, and great weather! We couldn't have asked for anything more!!

3-D train cake Grandma Terry and I made. It was our first 3-D cake so it was a learning process for the both of us. But we did it and look how well it turned out!!

Even made you your very own cake 

Play Time

Taking a walk with Grandpa Mike

It's cruising time!

3 Generations

Not sure what you were doing but we were all smiling at you

You were probably doing something cute like this

CAKE!

A little unsure of the whole cake and candle thing

You were still unsure so daddy cut off a few bites for you

This is the messiest you got!

Sharing a laugh with Aunt Kate

  

Opening Presents

 Happy 1st Birthday sweet little boy!! 

Ty & Adriana's Wedding

Last weekend we went over to Bozeman for Ty (your 2nd cousin) & Adriana's wedding. We went over Friday so we could hangout with family at the rehearsal dinner Friday night. Saturday was your 1st birthday so before the wedding we had breakfast with Grandpa Dave, Grandma Terry, Uncle Keith, Aunt Cari, and cousin Ridge. Afterwards we did a little birthday celebration and you got to open presents!

It was a perfect day for a wedding, gorgeous location and great weather. You did awesome too! We didn't know how you'd do with no naps but you sat through the entire ceremony without making a peep and then you were pretty much go..go..go the rest of the night. You were a dancing machine and just made loops around the dance floor all night. Everyone sure got a kick out of you and loved your "tie" shirt.

Holding hands with cousin Ridge and look you're twins!

Doing what kids do best, exploring!

Aunt Jenn & Momma

Cuddling with Grandpa Dave just before the ceremony

Beautiful ceremony - Congrats Ty & Adriana!

All the siblings

Ty & Adriana's daughter, Kaiya, aka the cutest flower girl ever. 

First Dance

The dancing machine!

Just taking a break

Month Twelve

Liam,

Happy birthday to you....happy birthday dear Liam...happy birthday to you!! Happy birthday to our big 1 yr old who turned 1 this weekend!! And all I can say is WOW, where has this year gone because I just can't believe you're 1 already. It has been a whirlwind of a year but the best year of my life.

Even though you're no longer our cute little cuddly baby, you've turned into quite the awesome lil' man. But I'm a little biased being your momma and all! I do miss the cuddling time you and I used to have as it doesn't happen as much as it used to but when it does I cherish every moment of it!

You're developing quite the personality and are becoming very independent. You're walking like crazy now and have been for the last few weeks so you don't like to be held very much anymore. You want to do it ALL BY YOURSELF! Which is fine because I want you to do it by yourself but when we're in the store or something like that you don't normally want to go the way I'm going so I put you in a cart instead. Luckily you still like to ride in the cart, I just have make sure not to get you to close to the shelves because you'll try to grab something if you get the chance. You love to explore and even look at me before you touch something to see if it's okay or not. You're a great listener and have learned when not to touch something. In our house we haven't really baby proofed except for locking some of the cabinets in the kitchen. We've taught you not to touch certain things like the picture frames on the book shelf and the dvds on the dvd rack. It's cute because when you're getting ready to touch something and we don't want you to touch it we make a loud noise saying uhuh and say "don't touch that", you'll look at us and shake your head no and then walk away. We were at great grandma Wynette's house and you were going to touch some stuff she had on the coffee table and I made a loud noise and told you not to touch it and you walked away.

You're definitely testing me more and more though. One evening when we were on our way home you were throwing a fit, half crying and half throwing a temper tantrum. So I turned and looked at you and told you "knock it off, you're fine", well you looked at me with this shocked look and stopped crying immediately. I think you were shocked by how stern I was. In turn you started to do all these cute faces and making cute noises to try and make me laugh. I had to keep facing forward so you wouldn't see me laughing. I can tell right now it's going to be hard to discipline you, you're already figuring out how to work it. I just need to keep telling myself...be strong...BE VERY STRONG!! Luckily you haven't needed very much discipline, its all about fun and exploring right now.

Now that you're walking around and can move around really easily you've graduated to more of the big boy toys. You love to crawl onto your rocking horse which makes me really nervous because you'll stand on the seat before you sit down. Then you can't quite figure out how to get down gracefully so to save you from crashing into the floor I put pillows all around you. But it's become more of a game where you'll tumble off the rocking horse into the pillows. I guess it's a good thing they're there. (It's so funny to watch so if I can I'll get it on video) You also like to sit on your 4-wheeler and push all the buttons and dance when it plays music. You're getting really good at getting on and off it and you love to push it around the living room. You also love your toy phones and mine and daddy's real phones but you don't get to play with ours very often. Occasionally we'll turn on some music on our phones and give it to you. You love to dance so you'll just hold the phone and dance. It's so cute! But everything you do is cute!! I usually try to have my camera with me but if I don't, I have my cellphone and try to capture as many cute moments as I can. You just never know!

A big change this month is you've switched to whole milk instead of formula. We still have some formula left so we'll give it to you ever now and again but you mostly get milk. It was an easy transition and not sure if you noticed the difference. If you did, I didn't notice.

You also got to try some mini red velvet cupcakes that I made for your birthday celebration at daycare on Thursday. The ladies there said you loved your cupcake and devoured the whole thing. You love sweets though, that's never been a problem with you. You also got to wear a birthday crown at daycare that day. You only wore it for a little bit but they gave it to us to take home and you'd wear it on and off pretty much the whole night.

You had your "1" year check-up yesterday. It went pretty good. You weigh 20lbs and are 30" long. You're about average on heighth and below average on your weight but the doctor said it's nothing to worry about. We found out you have a minor ear infection but it was enough that he prescribed some more antibiotics. Since it was minor we didn't ask about tubes but if you keep getting ear infections we may ask next time. You also had to have three shots, two vaccines and a flu shot. The first shot in the leg you didn't cry at all, the second in the other leg you winced and really started to cry, and were still crying when he did the final one in your arm. I winced and even gasped as you moved in pain on the second shot but I didn't realize it until daddy said something a little later. I think I need to get better at hiding my reactions when you are in pain or get hurt or I'm going to make you cry more! The good thing is you bounced back pretty quickly.

Happy 1st birthday sweet little boy!! We love you very much and look forward to many more special moments.

Love,
Momma