Growing Graham: 12 Months

Graham is by far the best entertainment we have.

He falls asleep in the "stink-bug" position every night.

He's walking now! He started about 2 weeks before his birthday and has hardly crawled since. Within 3 days he attempted running.... in a concrete parking lot (see below). Needless to say, it was not the best of choices and he hasn't tried running again just yet.

He's also learned to climb on things. He climbs on the chairs at the kitchen table and will throw whatever is on the table onto the floor. (My mom has one less glass Pyrex dish now.) He climbs on the 5-gallon buckets of flour and sugar in the pantry so that he can reach his snacks on the shelves that are out of his reach. He tries to climb up me when I'm standing next to him, and if I'm wearing pants or shorts with an elastic waistband he'll pull them right down while trying to do so.

My mom taught him to go down the stairs. She sat with him for about 2 hours just showing him over and over how to do it. Now he's a pro! He's only taken a head-first dive twice down them, and luckily I was standing close enough to catch him before he tumbled all the way down both times. It scared him enough that now he always goes down backwards, feet first. And he's getting faster and faster at it too!

He's been acting really ridiculously silly. He fake laughs when we laugh at him, and then he'll do whatever made us laugh over and over while trying to get us to laugh at him again. He also fake coughs when we cough. And he dances! Well, it's his way of dancing. Any time he hears music, he tilts his head right and left over and over, bounces once or twice, and smiles the entire time. It's hilarious, and very much some "white-boy" dance moves.

He talks a lot. I mean, incessantly. I love it. He has opinions and tells full stories and jokes without saying any actual words at all. But his voice inflections are spot on, and he'll repeat the sounds we make. He's also learning a little bit of sign language. I think he knows more than he lets on. I've seen him ask for more and tell me he's all done eating, although he doesn't do that every time. Amazingly, he knows what I mean when I tell him, "No." Sometimes he does it anyway (avoiding eye contact with me and trying to quickly do whatever it is), sometimes he throws a fit (but doesn't do the thing that I'm telling him no about), and sometimes he stops and does something else without whining at all.

He still loves to eat. And he still doesn't ever seem to get full, not matter how many plates of food he eats. He's gotten excellent at feeding himself. He gets more food in his mouth than on the floor (although we have to scoop a lot off of his lap and back onto his plate 3-4 times each meal) and he tries to use his utensils. He mostly uses his hands to eat, and then will stick the empty fork or spoon in his mouth just mimicking what we do with them. He also is starting to hold his own sippy-cup now too! He still prefers for us to hold it for him, but he won't hesitate to grab it and get himself a drink from it when he wants to.

Spaghetti behind the ear must mean it's good!

We've been starting to teach him to pray. He's slowly getting the hang of it. Before we eat, we pray, so every time we sit down at the table for a meal he'll look around at us for a second, then clasp his hands together for a few seconds, and then wait impatiently until we're done praying and I put his plate of food on his tray. It's hilarious and downright adorable!

One of my favorite things that he does right now is when I smile at him, he'll give me the biggest, cheesiest, squinty-eyed smile right back. I just love it and I laugh every time. He does it on purpose--squints his eyes closed and smiles as wide as he can while tilting his head to the side.

We gave him fresh cooked beets for the first time. He ate every last bite of them!
And then he had purple poop for 2 days afterward.

Such a ham!

But my all-time favorite thing he does right now is the way he expresses his love. He doesn't blow or give kisses (I don't know if I'll ever be able to teach him to do that). He doesn't really hug either. But he does press his forehead against whatever part of your body he can reach--be it your leg, arm, lap, foot, hand, toe, shoulder, or your own head. Sometimes when he's in a really affectionate mood, he'll sit in my lap and just press his head against mine over and over while making the sweetest, most content cooing sounds I've ever heard. Oh, it just melts my heart!

There's never a dull moment with him. I love him more and more each day. I'm so happy to have a
growing Graham as my bouncy little boy!