Dominic - ONE YEAR

It feels appropriate that it has been a year since Dominic was born. It does not, however, feel appropriate that he is no longer a baby! We celebrated his birthday today at our house with some family and friends. 

Weight: 27lb 8oz. (100+ percentile)
Length: 30 inches (60-65th percentile)

Likes:

• Going through and emptying the tupperware cupboard. We have elastics preventing him from getting into all our other cupboards, but that one is fair game!
• Food. He eats SO so much. 
• Bath Time
• Animals. He definitely as a particular affinity for dogs, but any animal he sees gets a HUGE smile and giggle. 
• Forward-facing in the Ergo. I think he just likes to feel like he's directing us where to go. 
• Music.
• Christmas Lights. We walked around the neighborhood to look at lights and he lit up (pun intended) every time we came across a nice set up!

Dislikes:

• Being strapped into the car seat or stroller. Once he's in he's okay, but definitely puts up a fight!
• Being wiped off after eating, unless David does it. David makes it fun in a way I am apparently incapable of replicating.
• Laying down for a diaper change. It is a two person job, and it's exhausting!

Notes:

• He has 6 teeth. 2 on the bottom and 4 up top. Only one of the top ones has really dropped though, so he looks super awkward with one big tooth up there. 
• He is wearing 18 month clothing now. My goodness he's a big boy!
• He is finally clapping his hands! I mentioned in the 11 month post that we were going to work on that. Well, 5 days after he turned 11 months he started clapping. Oh it is way too cute! Now when we sing "Happy and you know it" he starts clapping and getting ready for the "If you're Bananas and you know it" line shaking his head and sticking out his tongue. 
• My text tone is him saying, "Ma ma" when he was 7 months old. He 100% things phones are called ma ma. We were at a birthday party and he grabbed someone's phone and they said, "Oh what do you have there?" And he said, "Ma ma!" Cue my embarrassment! Haha
• He is now 100% weaned off of formula and on to homo milk. It was really easy to wean him. He didn't seem to know the difference. For a 6oz bottle we started with doing 4oz formula, 2oz milk. The next week we did 3 and 3. The third week we did 2oz formula, 4oz milk. Now he's all milk!
• He can walk! He prefers to crawl still. He will walk much better if he's not thinking about it. He's taken up to 6 or 7 steps!
• If we say, "Byeeee!" he will stop whatever he is doing and start waving. 
• He has some words. Not many of them are spontaneous (pointing to a dog and saying dog, for example), but he will repeat our words often! 
• Words he knows: Mama, Dada, Boo, Ball, Uh-oh, Opa (Puh), Bye (Pah), Ho Ho Ho
• Animal sounds he knows: Dog (raow raow), cow (moooo), owl (hoo hoo!), snake (hisss), elephant (pathetic fart noise), pig (snort snort), monkey (ooh ooh ah ah!)
• His animal noises are MUCH more spontaneous than his words. We have a few books with animals in them, and he will flip to a page, and he has a certain sound for that page. The African page is the elephant, the primates is the monkey sound, the Australian page is the dog (Dingo), the reptiles is the snake), the Arctic is a wolf howl, the nocturnal page is the owl, and the petting zoo is the pig sound. 
• He tries to put on his own socks and hats. Not successfully...
• He is trying really hard to learn to spoon-feed himself. The other day he grabbed a piece of muffin, stuck it on his spoon, and got it to his mouth! He's got the right idea!
• He blows kisses. Or... makes kissing noises anyway. So darling. 
• He understands a LOT more than we think he does. 
• If something makes him sad, his blanket will almost always cheer him up. If that fails, I can pretty much 100% guarantee food will make him happy again! Just get that boy some cheerios!
• He is sleeping well still, but not quite as well. Our routine has been disrupted the past week due to Christmas events, etc. 
• HE HAS STOPPED SPITTING UP! Thank the maker!! As soon as we got him off of formula and onto regular milk he has pretty well stopped. 

A typical Day:

630/7am - Wake Up & 5oz bottle

8am - Breakfast (oatmeal with peanut butter; and cheerios)

945am - Nap 1

1115am - Wake up & 5oz bottle

1pm - Lunch (Leftovers, Grilled Cheese, Eggs, Muffin, Pears, Cheese, or any combination of these)

245pm - Nap 2

345pm - Wake up & 5oz bottle

5pm - Dinner (Usually whatever we're eating. He eats most things now!)

645 - start winding down

7/715 - Bedtime!

He's been waking up earlier and falling asleep later this week. I can't tell if he's getting ready to go down to 1 nap or if he's just been so busy he's overstimulated. We may try after his birthday to get him down to 1 long nap each day instead of 2 shorter ones.