Liam at One Year Old
Well, we now have a one year old. On Sunday we had to check the blog to remember what time Liam was born last year. We attribute that lack of memory to the fact that it was a busy few months following and that no one really knew what time Liam was born – not the fact that he is the second child. And we retold the story of Liam’s arrival.
There were parts of that story that I’d forgotten, and that I had never known. Apparently after watching his wife go through the cumbersome registration process while in preterm labor, twice, Tim was thrilled to have our nurses essentially thumb their nose at the registration desk of the labor and delivery unit as we went flying down the hall, demanding that the doors be opened and that we could do the paperwork later for crying out loud. And I had forgotten what close attention Liam’s medical team paid to Nathan’s history (which they still remembered so well) to do their best to avoid any procedures that could have contributed to Nathan’s complications, just in case Liam might be prone to those complications too.
Now five days after his birthday, Liam is getting into this one year old thing.
He adores standing on his feet and longs to be able to do it on his own. He tries to let go of our hands when standing with us. When he standing at the ottoman, he leans on it as little as possible and shifts his weight slowly from one foot to the other, trying to figure out how to get one foot to move to begin cruising. And he know loves to walk around, holding on to our fingers. It’s only the past month that Liam has admitted rolling is a fun and useful skill, so we’ll see what he decides about crawling or if we’re just going to go from a roller to a walker.
Liam also has his first teeth coming in – the two front bottom ones. They don’t seem to be bothering him at all. In fact, Tuesday night, while I was away, Liam slept through the night, and then Wednesday morning Nathan discovered the teeth.
Nathan: “I think he had a tooth.”
Tim: “Really? How can you tell?”
Nathan: “I could feel it when he was chewing on my hand…”
And speaking of sleep, we've had three uninterrupted nights in a row, which is a record for Liam. Maybe this is a new one year old thing too. If so, we’ll take it. But we’re not getting our hopes up yet.
Liam’s collection of “words” – vowel and consonant combinations used consistently with the same apparent meaning – just keeps grow. So far we have Dada, Mama, NaeNae (the long A sound of Nathan), and first consonant/vowel combinations for brother, up, again, more, book, all done, a pretty good banana, and lots more that I’m forgetting. Mostly we feel like we know what Liam is talking about when he uses single words or two word combinations. When he tries his hand had full sentences, we have no idea what’s going on in his head. He sings a lot too, pays attention to rhythm, and tries to copy pitch and inflection. (Be still our music dork hearts.)
In April he weighed 18lb. He’s heavier now.
So that’s Liam at one year old. We love having him in our family.