1 Year in the Big Blue Chair

This is almost a month late, and looking back, I can see so much has changed.


For instance, the monkey that was just a plaything is now his stuffie of choice. He has gone from someone I had to watch on the chair to make sure he got down safely, to someone I have to watch to make sure he doesn't try to go over the back to get to the floor.
At the same time, some things looked exactly the same this morning.

These two...

T worships E.

This means that he tries to do everything he sees E do, whether or not he can or understands what, exactly, E was doing. This means that T is often frustrated. This means they always want the toy the other one is playing with. This means that E often reaps the rewards of his actions without realizing it, as T's less-than-perfect motor control makes a four-year-old's spastic gesture into an outright slap from the one-year-old.

But people, he is trying SO HARD to keep up.

And most of the time, they're both really enjoying it.


Do you see that grin?

Let's see what happens if I toss Zoomer on the ground...

Mo-om, you were supposed to fetch that.
Yes, T is regularly frustrated. And E works too hard at being helpful sometimes - to the point that he's too busy herding T and the cats to do what he is supposed to be doing.

This one has looked at the last six months as one big challenge course. Can I roll? Can I crawl? Can I walk? Can I get up? Can I get down?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes...

Thump.

He's mostly a happy little human, with the best smile and those arms that lift toward whatever he wants, with a little grunt just to direct your attention. He is amazing about asking first, but if you miss those first quiet cues, he will explode in a sad outcry now. He knows what he wants, and he'll work hard to get it, if your adult rules and that whole gravity thing would just get out of the way. He crawls to the top of the couch, up the windowsills over the tub... anywhere he can. He's walking almost exclusively as I write this, although he's intensely frustrated by his drunken stumbles. But, mostly, he just wants to explore.

Are you coming? Try to keep up.

For the record, T weighed in at 18 lb 10 oz, and 31.5" at his one-year visit. Just after his first birthday he started breaking out a molar, which would be tooth number 7 except it STILL hasn't broken through yet.
For more big blue chair pics, click here.