Documenting a year of life…the 12 month update…

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We Made It…
The big 01. I’m so full of emotion. I didn’t expect to be but it’s hit me hard. I’m so excited about all of the changes and new things Ritter can do. However, it’s just so shocking just how FAST everything has happened. In some ways those newborn days seem SO long ago…but in other ways it seems like we’ve blinked and he’s 1. In the midst of those hard newborn days everyone says “I’ll never do this again” but then you get that newborn amnesia and you forget how bad it really was and you quickly want another. I’m definitely NOT ready for another right now but I will tell you this…you truly do forget how hard it was. And that’s easy to do with Ritter because he’s been such an easy baby from the start. The little hiccups here and there were so short lived that I barely remember them. I mean…he was sleeping through the night at 14 weeks and has maybe only had 3-5 nights of disruption since then with teething, wonder weeks, or sickness. And he’s one. Can we all stop to marvel at that?! People laughed and made fun of how obsessive I was at sticking to his schedule but, by god, he’s simply the best little sleeper. And loves sleeping. And nap time. And goes down so easy. I’m just so grateful! You watch other people go through sleep issues and you quickly thank your lucky stars for your good sleeper.

So lots of big changes just in this last week since his birthday…

First of all, he stopped taking bottles. Just stopped. We were working on transitioning to sippy cups for the middle of the day but I was sure we’d keep that morning bottle and that bedtime bottle for a bit longer. Nope. He just started flat out refusing them. I was SO sad because morning bottle cuddle time was the BEST start to my day and I didn’t even get a warning that it was going to end. 😦 So now he’s just on 3 meals a day and 3 cups of milk and that’s it. I’m also adding in a snack in the afternoon but timing that is tough with his nap schedule changing. I moved his last meal of solids closer to our dinner time since he’s no longer getting that bedtime bottle – and now we can all eat dinner together!

Next big thing is that he SEEMS to be getting ready to move to just 1 nap a day. I AM SO RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!!! People in my mommy FB group are probably sick of my posts about moving to 1 nap. I’ve been waiting for a while! The main reason is because we always have to be home for nap time…y’all know I’m psycho about protecting the nap! It makes it hard to get out and do stuff with him on my off day. He has been napping for about 2 hours at 10 and 3 every day since he was 6 months old. So after you get him up and give him lunch you don’t have much time to go and do stuff before you have to be home to get him ready for the 2nd nap. Once you make the transition to 1 nap you can get out and do more in the mornings and not have to rush home. This means I can start taking him to the gym with me on fridays AND we can meet friends for the zoo and lunch once it starts to cool off!!!! I have read countless books and blogs about the transition to 1 nap so I knew what to look for. He started exhibiting some of the signs this week. This transition usually takes place between 12 and 15 months but my overall goal is to have him on 1 nap at 1:00 by 15 months when he starts school because that’s what he’ll be expected to do then. So…over the next couple of months we are slowing going to be shortening the morning nap and moving the afternoon nap up. This started this week and he’s done beautifully. The morning nap will go from 2 hours to 1.5 hours to 1 and so on until it’s just a catnap and this will cause him to need the afternoon nap earlier and earlier until I get it to 1:00. Then we eliminate the morning catnap and we’re done! At least that’s my plan. Every other time over this last year that I’ve made changes to his schedule or routine he’s adapted so quickly. I totally expect him to do fine with this!

Since Ritter began on solids his diet has consisted mostly of veggies because, hell, that’s mostly all I eat. He eats fruit in the morning but usually not later in the day and veggies at lunch and dinner. I made his baby food and then we just progressed from there to him eating veggies as finger foods. I have done a great job of giving him a huge variety of stuff… spinach, kale, eggplant, rutabaga, cabbage, carrots, butternut squash, avocado, and every kind of bean and pea imaginable. In the last week or 2 I’ve been adding in a little more animal protein (eggs, fish, and some ground turkey) and more grains – quinoa and brown rice. He absolutely LOVES eggs. Just like mommy and daddy. It’s hilarious to watch him eat them. I also gave him some of my dairy free lasagna this week and he devoured it. It was a mess but fun to watch him eat. I’m also going to start him on a multivitamin. The pediatrician suggested this but I don’t really know if it’s necessary since he eats such a well balanced, plant-based diet. But I figure it can’t hurt him so why not.

Oh…not sure if this is part of the current wonder week he’s in or what but the kid is just simply not interested in toys right now. He is pulling up on everything. All he wants to do is go from one piece of furniture to the next and pull up. He’s also become highly unfocused. ha. He points to his books and says “read” and we pick him up and he grabs a book and then he won’t sit still long enough for you to read it. He grabs onto my legs to pick him up and as soon as I do he wants back down again. He got ALL these fun new toys for his bday and he won’t play with a single one of them. It’s so bizarre.

The mushy stuff…

The packing away of the bottles, the formula mixing pitcher (that was my greatest baby item find by the way), the bottle drying rack, the baby caps, the mittens, and the “baby toys” today was emotional. I spent so much time getting the nursery so perfectly organized, not even realizing that the little bin of mittens and baby booties would be obsolete before I could blink. If you’re my friend on social media you know I have obsessively documented this child’s life thus far. It was alot of work. ALOT OF WORK. But at this moment I am SO thankful I did it. I didn’t take one minute with him for granted. I soaked it all in and made sure to remember and document even the littlest detail or milestone. If you know me personally, you know that is just part of my personality in general but it’s also because there isn’t much for me to look back on to remember my own childhood. My mom was a single working mom who barely had time to do the basic stuff, much less carry a camera and baby book around. She did what she could, but there are very few photos and milestones recorded from my childhood. So…from as far back as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with photos. Not sure why. My mom, to this day, doesn’t own a camera and could care less about taking photos. The woman went to Ireland recently and I have yet to see a photo from that trip. It’s just not a big deal to her. So maybe that influence sorta had the opposite effect on me. My friends growing up can even tell you…I always had a camera with me and I annoyed everyone with my obsession about documenting everything. I became scrapbook obsessed in college too (thank you Shara Brehm) and I still pull those out and look at them to this day. I cherish them. I don’t care one bit about holding onto material things but when it comes to photographs, I will never let them go. So…all that to say…when I found out I was pregnant I was sorta overwhelmed with the prospect of documenting my pregnancy and the life of my child. I remember saying to myself, out loud, “I WILL keep up with his baby book..I will NOT get so busy that I don’t document these things for him.” Over this past year I have asked SO many moms what their kid was doing at ____ age and they could never remember and they always said “I wish I had written more stuff down.” So there’s that. I made it through the first year and I documented it all. Even with a full time job and being super busy with Ritter, I sat up SO many nights writing in the baby book and blogging. And I wouldn’t change a thing. For years to come our family will look back at all of the photos and posts and pages in his baby book and we will tell stories and we will laugh and it will be so special to me.

Current Schedule:

7:30 – wake him up (and we really are having to wake him up most days!), get dressed for the day, and start breakfast
7:40 – breakfast in highchair (oatmeal, fruit, or eggs), cup of milk (5oz)
8:00 – play time
9:45 – soothe down for nap (rock and read), asleep by 10:00-10:15
11:30 – wake up
12:00 – lunch, cup of milk
12:30 – play time
2:00 – small snack if he seems hungry or didn’t eat alot at lunch
2:45 – soothe down for nap – nap at 3:00
4:30 – wake up
5:30-6:30 dinner and milk – since he is no longer taking a bedtime bottle we are trying to move dinner a little later.
7:30 – bath
8:00 – bed

**we’ve only been on this new bottle-free-shortened-nap schedule for a few days. If he starts having trouble going down for the 2nd nap again we will shorten the morning nap sooner than I planned. I will just follow his lead on this.

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