Twelve months...

My dear Patchy

It is such surreal feeling that you are twelve months. You have come from this tiny infant into a larger than life, robust, busy one year old. Unreal! 

While I was getting the decorations ready for your party, I had all your monthly photos printed and hung as a poster. Some months your have really put on the weight and others your have got longer. It's such a great way to see your twelve months. 

In the past month you have continued to get faster and faster with your crawling. You are crawling full time now on hands and knees. You are still cursing around on the furniture and every now and again will only hang on with one hand and spin out so you can look at things around you or drop to your hands and knees to crawl away. A couple of times you have completely let go and stood on your own, usually when you are going for a drink or any type of food. Once you realise you are standing you get so excited you sit down. Once or twice you have even tried to take a step away from the furniture only to drop again. You get so excited about standing and even trying to walk! And to see you pushing the walker, you are usually in a fit of laughter. 

Your favourite thing for the past couple of months would have to be crawling under the dining room table or James' small table and chairs and just sitting there. It's pretty cute to see you sitting under there with a big grin on your face. You also love to stand and push all the chairs around which is very noisy!

You continue to be a good eater and will devour anything put in front of you. The past two months you have become very independant and won't let anyone spoon feed you, so BLW it was. I was doing this for lunches anyway so now you started eating what we were for dinner as well. It makes my life a little easier since I don't have to make your dinners separately but I do have to watch what we give you in case it is a little spicy. You love any protein, especially steak or chicken, and have started to eat more veggies. 

Now that you are twelve months I wanted to reflect over your different health issues since birth. I haven't written much about these but for my own memory I wanted a bit of a record. Since birth you have been a bit of a chucker. I always thought it may have been something to do with wind, as you seem to have a problem with bringing it up as an infant. As soon as you would lay down you would throw up or cry. I spoke to your Peadatriction at six months, who said it was normal for some children and you would grow out of it.  As you got older, you would throw up when you started to roll and move around and by six months you would throw up in bed at least three or four times a week. Sometimes a couple of times a day. At six months, when you were having solids more frequently the throwing up didn't stop and become more smelly. I was worried it was hurting you, so again I took you to the doctor. When you threw up, you would keep right on playing or doing whatever you were doing and wouldn't whinge or cry, so the doctor again told me you would grow out of it and it was just an inconvenience. It certainly was! If I forgot to put a bib on you, you would go through a few outfits a day because they would be soaked. And we would always need a rag handy to keep spew off ourselves or to clean it up. Over the six months since, you have a few good days in a row when you keep everything down and then a couple of days when you bring it up. Since moving to formula at ten months, I thought it would help but nothing changed. Now at twelve months the bad days seem to be a bit further apart every week so I'm hoping you will turn the corner soon. 

The other health concern you had was a blocked tear duct. At two weeks, when you came out of hospital, we noticed your left eye was crusting over and weeping. We continued to clean it with warm salted water but the eye continue like this for a few weeks. At your six week check-up, I spoke with the nurse who told us it was a blocked tear duct. We were to continue to clean it and over time it would heal itself. And then one day at around five months it just stopped. Your little body just corrected and healed itself!

While I am a little sad at your first year finishing, I can't wait to see what else you have in store for us!

From the moment you came into this world and everyday since then, you have surprised us. You made our family complete and we love you so much! To our dear Patch, Happy Birthday. Hope you had a terrific day sweet boy. 

Love always Mama and Dada.