Two Chompers

Ian finally has a second tooth! He's been working on cutting 3 teeth this past week. One of them has finally popped through. A second one is going to pop through any day now. The third... well, let's say that it's decided to sit back, relax, and take it's sweet old time! Haha.The second tooth that has popped through is on the top gum. On the opposite side as his first tooth, that's on the bottom. I remember mentioning to William that it would be funny if his second tooth comes in on the top, and I guess I was right! :P Hopefully after these teeth pop through I'll get a break from his crying. LOL. His birthday is in 2 weeks and 3 days, maybe the other two teeth will decide to pop through before then so he can eat his cake easier!!

Speaking of his birthday, I can't believe that almost a year has passed already. It's amazing to see how far he's come, see how much he's grown. Seeing what he does now is evidence enough, but when I look back at pictures and videos taken months ago, the evidence is even stronger. I remember when he wasn't even interested in toys, all he wanted to do was sleep. Now, it's pretty much the opposite! He's grown so much and learned so much in the past 11 months. He may take his time with some things (teething, crawling), but once he starts, there's no stopping him. He'll probably be properly crawling soon, and then walking straight to running after that! He's already learning little words, and once he can string them together to make sentences, it'll be hard to shut him up! :P

Anyways, enough reminiscing. I need to keep this brief as Ian is headed straight to mischief!

Here are the teaser photos from the shoot last weekend, as promised!

These are taken at the Volunteer Park in Seattle, WA. All © Rachel Corkern, Focal Point Photography.

William is Home!

As the title portrays, William got home today. He arrived at the airport at noon, but didn't get to the house until around 4:30. He was helping his dad bring an antique English car home. When Ian saw his daddy walking up the drive, a big smile broke over his face, he pointed to him, and said 'da-da'! He was very excited and repeated the whole thing a few times. He wanted hugs from William when he walked inside, and was very sad when William left 20 minutes later to bring a boat home. (His dad had 2 antique English cars and a small sailboat shipped here from the UK, the first car was brought to the house last night.)

Let's rewind and look over the past few days since I last posted.

Ian has managed to go through 1 full week without his pacifier. His naps during the day are slowly getting longer, and he's starting to take more than one shot at taking a nap. He has slept all through the night each night, falling right asleep when he's laying down and the lights are off.

One day in the middle of the week, we had Ian call William just for fun, but then William couldn't really talk because he was eating dinner or talking with friends. Ever since then, each time the home phone rang, Ian would point at it and say 'da-da' questioningly, remembering that he had heard his daddy's voice from it. Today, an unavailable number had called the home phone, Ian had pointed at it, asked 'da-da?', and when I pressed the 'OFF' button to make it stop ringing, he made noises that sounded like he said 'Where's da-da?'. It was so cute.

Today, and yesterday, Ian has fallen asleep eating his lunch bottle. It's adorable! He was getting cranky, and it was getting close to lunch time, so I would warm up his lunch bottle, and before he's even finished, he's passed out! He even did that a second time today with his dinner bottle almost 45 minutes ago. Maybe the sucking motion lulls him to sleep like his pacifier did. :P He does miss his pacifier, but he's doing well without it.

Yesterday, I noticed that he has two new teeth working their way to the surface. The second tooth on the bottom front teeth, and one on the top. I'm not sure which one is closer to popping out, it would be funny if he had one tooth on the bottom, and one on the top for a little bit before the second bottom tooth pops out! I can see small white bits of the corner of both teeth, so I have a feeling that he'll have more teeth before long! Yay! :)

Ian is getting better at trying to pull himself to a stand. He hasn't really worked on that much int he past couple days, maybe we can get him to try again this weekend! He really has only tried to pull himself up with his play yard gate while he's inside playing with his toys, and the past couple days, if he's in there, he's either interested in playing with his toys or wanting out.

Tomorrow, we have our first family photoshoot! We are hoping to have this photographer as our wedding photographer, so this is our 'trail' photoshoot. I'm hoping that we'll be able to get the photos very quickly from her so I can put them up! After that, we're having a Mother's Day BBQ at Amanda & Chris's house. My wedding dress fitting is Sunday morning, then we'll be on our way home! This has been a long (but fun) week. We enjoy spending time with William's parents, but we'll be glad to get home, and hopefully all of our things at home is safe! There was a break-in to the apartment below us and things were stolen, so I've been a little worried (at the back of my mind) all week that something would happen while we're gone, but hopefully not!

I'll post pictures of the photoshoot soon, when we get the photos!

Ian Turns One Soon

I can't believe that my baby is almost 1 year old. Time has flown by! This week, we're at his grandparents (my soon-to-be in-laws) as William is in Reno, NV for training for work.
What has been going on since the last update....

Ian can now sit himself up from laying down. The first couple times that he did it, I actually didn't see him do it! I would look over one minute and he would be on his tummy, and the next minute I'd look over and he's sitting up! A couple times he would sit himself up underneath the coffee table and keep banging his head on the underneath!

He is also taking much more interest in his toys. He's learning how to make things work. He has a few board books, and now, instead of chewing on the corners, he actually flips through the pages! A couple weeks ago, he got a musical learning laptop, and when the music plays, he dances to the rhythm. The toy has 12 buttons, 4 letters, 4 numbers, and 4 animals. Each says 3 different phrases (the letters say 2 phrases and a song). He played with it so much the batteries have had to be replaced already! Twice! Ian has gotten good at sharing the toys that he plays with, his socks that he loves to take off and chew on, and sometimes air or 'food' that he takes out of his mouth (again, air). He is a very loving little boy!

Ian is very well at the army crawl now, he can get to where he wants to be fairly quick! Occasionally it looks like he's trying to actually crawl on his hands and knees, but he hasn't shown much progress towards that yet. With his added learning of independence, he doesn't like sleeping in his crib anymore, and he's even more attached to me. Just a couple days ago, he started to try to pull himself up to a stand while sitting in front of the couch or his playpen gate. He hasn't managed to get very far, he just falls right back down!

Today is his 5th day of no pacifier. He does pretty well without it, besides the lack of sleep during the day because he doesn't have it to lull him into his naps. At night he gets to sleep fairly quick, probably a combination of laying down next to me and being exhausted from about 10-30 minutes of sleep during the day, average. He throws temper tantrums a little more because he doesn't have the pacifier to calm him down. So, he cries a bit more during the day, but that's to be expected. I thought nights would be harder than during the day, but it's the opposite! That may change, it may stay the same until he gets used to having no pacifier, we will see!

Recently, it sounds like he's starting to try and say words. He also points to things and makes noises. He likes to point to the dogs and cats at his grandparents house and be taken over to pet them. We're still teaching him to be gentle with the pets and actually stroke them instead of hitting them like normal. He's slowly getting better at it. When he's by the dogs, he makes sounds like he's trying to say 'dog', but it sounds more like 'da-da'. (The 'a' sounding more like the 'o' in 'dog', not 'dad'.)

The past couple days, he's been eating 'big boy' meals with us at dinner time. Saturday and Sunday he had diced tomatoes, bits of lettuce, and a bit of shredded cheese. We had steak with salad Saturday night, so he had a baby-sized salad. Sunday, we had tacos, so he had the toppings. He was much more enthusiastic about eating the meal on Saturday, but wasn't terribly excited about eating the exact meal the next day! Today, we had chicken alfredo, and I diced up the chicken and noodles for him, skipped the sauce because that would have been really messy and too hot for him. He's eating away, he just loves eating his meals off of his baby plate. He actually eats the food off of the plate instead of picking the plate up and making a mess, like I was afraid off! It's hard to believe that he's growing up so fast! He's progressed so far since his 9 month baby well-check visit, and his pediatrician said that he was a little slow in the gross motor skills region! During the week that followed the visit, he had started to learn how to crawl, now he's eating so well off of a baby plate and learning how to pull himself up to a stand! He's getting so big... 20 pounds and 29 inches tall. He's as adorable as ever, and you can already tell that he loves his family so much. He loves learning new things. Pretty soon, I'll probably be teaching him to try and say more words (than just mama and dada [sometimes]).

Well, that's all for now, I've given you a lot to read! Hope you enjoyed this post, and I'll be back soon writing more!