Grayson's 12th Month

Wow!  What an exciting month for you!  Your first visit to the most magical place on earth, meeting your favorite characters, riding rides, and just eating everything you could get your little mouth and teeth on!  Oh boy, do you love to eat!  Birthday cake, not so much...but anything else is fair game.  If food is in your view and you are not able to get it to your mouth, you will get very "hangry" and yell something that sounds very close to "mine mine mine!"  Yep, you sound like those little seagulls in Finding Nemo.  Haha!

Size:  At your one year check up, you were just under at 20 lbs. at 19 lbs. ____ oz.  I don't know how you aren't huge because you eat like a champ.  You are still very long so that is probably where your calories go.  And you poop a lot.  Haha!  You can still wear the size 3 diapers, but we decided to try the size 4 to prevent leaks.   You wear mostly 12 to 18 month clothes and definitely fill out the length of 18 month pants.   

Developmental Accomplishments:  Crawling everywhere!  You are also pulling up now on everything and reaching for things we don't think you can reach.  You still didn't want to cruise and walk on two feet yet this month but did finally take off holding onto your little shopping cart at 13 months.  Hey, I am not rushing the walking thing because I am still sad how fast you are growing up.  You are much more vocal now, and we often can't tell whether it is you or your brother Mattox talking when you are playing together.  You both like to scream high pitched screams at one another.  Haha!  I am sure you are learning from him.  You do say a lot of sounds and differentiate between mama and dada and maybe my-my-my for mine-mine-mine when you want something really bad.  You crawl around and play all day with very little need or desire for mama to hold you which makes me sad.  Mattox is really loving you more now although he does get a little rough sometimes and has tried to run you over with his car or sit on you or wrestle and tackle you like his big brothers.  Ha!  But he really does love you.  You like getting into cabinets and drawers now and finding new treasures to play with.  You are just a sweet little mess!
   
Sleeping:  When we can finally get you to go to sleep, you usually sleep all night and pretty late in the morning.  You are getting harder to settle down now because you are just going full speed ahead all the time.  

Eating:  You eat everything!  I am so thankful that you still wanted some breast feeding time mostly in the morning and at night and maybe one feeding in the afternoon, but you are drinking some whole milk with meals and really becoming less dependent on Mommy milk.  I can now say sadly that you decided at just over 13 months that you were finished with breastfeeding and everytime I tried to feed you, you would immediately clamp down hard and bite.  You still never took a bottle but will drink from a sippy cup with milk, water, and sometimes a little bit of apple juice and water mixed.  I do hope the sippy cup stage will not last long.  Your big brothers never liked them because they didn't want to have to lift them up to drink.  They preferred straws so I hope you do the same.  Right now, you don't mind lifting your cup up to drink by yourself.   You still really love eating solid foods and have eaten a lot of our meals.  You still eat mostly mixed combination meals with a fruit and oatmeal or yogurt combination for breakfast, a vegetable and meat combination for lunch, and a meat and vegetable combination for dinner.  You have now tried EVERYTHING...avocados, peas, squash, apples, pears, bananas, sweet potatoes, peaches, green beans, broccoli, white potatoes, mangoes, butternut squash, ground beef, pasta, bread, cheese, milk, and eggs.   For easy meals at home, you like white potatoes mixed with a green vegetable like peas, green beans, or broccoli or chicken mixed with an orange vegetable like sweet potatoes, butternut squash, or carrots. I don't have to puree most of your food anymore and can just chop things up finely.  You love ice cream, pasta with meat sauce, Chick-fil-a grilled nuggets cut up for you with apple sauce, and sharing my Mexican bowl at Moe's Southwest Grill.  

Teeth:  You got your sixth tooth with two on the bottom and four on the top just before your first birthday. 

Favorites:  Mommy; Cocoa (your dog); food; when Daddy gets home from work when you crawl very quickly to the door to meet him; playing with your big brothers; cars; cups or bowls that have food or drink in them that you try to grab; bath time and splashing in the water

Nicknames:  Grayson Payson (goes with Evan Pevin, Brody Pody, Mattox Pattox), Gray Pay, Gray Gray, Graysie Goo (because he is just a little gooey sweet mess)

{More pictures coming soon}