Will - 12 Months

Happy 1 Year Old Will!

How on earth has a year already passed by?!?!

Stats:
Weight - 22 lbs and 1 oz
Height - 29.75 inches

Food:
We are finally moving on to table food. He will pretty much eat anything that we give him, except he sometimes isn't too thrilled with the textured baby food. I don't know why; he eats chunkier food that isn't baby food. I sure hope that he isn't picky like me! I still give lots of baby food just because I don't feed him during our meal times and it is easy. He loves waffles or pancakes for breakfast. Chicken or turkey pieces for lunch or dinner are a big hit.  We try to share food with him when we go out to eat. He has been introduced to Cracker Barrell food so he is liking vegetables, dumplings, and hashbrown casserole.
We made the transition from formula to whole milk and that was easy. I am glad to see the formula go - it smelled terrible! Our next challenge is the transition from bottle to sippy cup. This is not going well so far! He will drink water from a sippy cup just fine. Just try to give him some milk in a sippy cup and I suggest that you stand back...it will be thrown at you and a temper tantrum begins. We have a plan of action to just pack up the bottles one day and he will eventually give in to the sippy cup, but I just can't take it away from him yet.

Mobility:
Still not walking on his own yet, but I expect it any day now. He moves all over the place as long as he is holding on to something. He has great balance though. I think he is already more coordinated that I am! He crawls so fast now. He also crawls up and down the stairs with the greatest of ease. Maggie is getting a workout trying to stay out of his way - every time he finds a good spot to lay down, Will comes charging towards her.
He is a climber. He climbs in and out of his Pampers box that all of his toys are in. He also manages to get in to Maggie's toy box. He loves to swing off of JT's shoulders and climb back towards the front of JT.
He is a dancer! Between MAO and Gram's disco days and my Zumba dancing while I was pregnant, this kid definitely has some dancing genes! He will let go of whatever he is holding on to and bounce his knees up and down when he hears music. And he just smiles the whole time!

He loves being outside! He is getting the idea of fetch and wants to play with Maggie so badly. He can grasp the tennis ball and hold it up to her, but we have to throw it. Sometimes Maggie is patient and waits for us to help him throw, other times she just runs up and takes it out of his hand.

Oh, and you can see in this picture that Will is a blonde! Finally something of me!

Airplane salute - This is hysterical and gets funnier every time he does it! He used to simply point in the air when he heard an airplane. Now he pretty much does it on command. And it isn't so much of a point now as a hand to the head like a salute.

We went for his 12 month check up and he had to get some shots. He did great as always. JT and I have a few concerns about Will. The spot on his back and huge vein on his right foot are pretty much unchanged since birth. These were both things that we were told would start to go away with time, and now that we are at the 1 year mark, we want to get them checked out. But most important at this visit was the identification of a hernia. JT had really diagnosed this a few months ago but we thought it might just be a hydrocele. The pediatrician sent us to a pediatric urologist at Vanderbilt. As suspected, Will has a hernia and also some type of cyst near his testicle. The only treatment for both of these is surgery. He is going to have surgery on June 7th and Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. The procedure will last 1.5-2 hours and we should be there for about 6 hours total that day. I knew that surgery was the only option, but I was expecting 15-30 minutes, not up to 2 hours. Oh well, it is the best thing for Will and that is all that matters.

Happy 1st Birthday lil' man! We love you more than anything! Thanks for the greatest year of our lives!