13 months!

Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger! We’ve been taking tons of video, and I just couldn’t get my act together to edit it down for the blog. I’ve got a few to catch you up, though.

Calvin is 13 months old now, and is still a little climbing monkey. He’s obsessed with “up” – he’s always reaching towards the ceiling, trying to touch things that are above his head. When we pick him up, he’ll frequently try to climb up onto our shoulders or heads to get even higher.

We took him in for his 1-year checkup at the doctor and he was 30 1/4 inches tall (75th percentile) and just shy of 22 pounds (25th percentile). He runs a little lean (relatively speaking, I guess – he’s still got cute little fat rolls) because he’s so active.

He’s very adept at climbing, but is also good now at getting back down; he goes down stairs really well, sometimes forward, sometimes backwards, depending on if he has something to hold onto or not. We took him to Krispy Kreme over the weekend and he spent a good 10 or 15 minutes doing laps around the little donut viewing platform they have for kids (up two stairs, run down the platform, down two stairs, go back to the other end and start over). It’s that baby OCD again…

He still dances to pretty much any music:

He’s very playful and it’s easy to make him laugh. Eric is definitely the #1 fun parent, though:

He’s getting into mimicking what we do, which makes it easier to teach him stuff. My mom taught him “so big” – basically, he puts his hands over his head when you ask him how big he is, and since he can’t yet SAY “so big,” he does his best approximation:

And here he is in a rare mellow moment:

Looks very content, doesn’t he?

Family resemblance

We’ve had some interesting opinions on who Calvin looks like most, so I thought I’d post some pictures of me and Eric when we were babies. I was going to try to find pictures of Calvin at about the same age and angle as each picture, but that proved to be pretty much impossible, so here are a few pics of Calvin at different ages to set the baseline:

Here are a couple of pictures of Eric:

Here are a couple of pictures of me:

This one is my very favorite baby photo – that’s my cousin Matt on the left.

What do you think? To be honest, I think he looks most like his cousin, Thelonious:

13 years

January 11, 1997

Wow, we look really young, don’t we?

It’s been an amazing journey so far. Happy Anniversary, Eric! I love you!

Calvin at age one

Let’s see, what’s the little dude getting up to these days?

He’s a climber – up on everything, and always trying to get to something else. We’re working with him to teach him to say “up.” Right now he says “uuuuuuhhhhhhh.” It gets the point across. His large motor skills are really good – he runs, climbs, kicks a ball around. He’s still a really busy kid – very active. 

I finally found shoes that he’ll wear (pedipeds), which is great. We let him run barefoot a lot, but sometimes shoes are a necessity. He actually laughs every time I put them on – not sure what that’s about.

And he still loves the beach.

He’s gotten much more snuggly in the past month or so, which is very sweet. He’s also still really friendly and social. Here he is with Eric’s cousin Barbara:

and with my Grandma:

I’m not sure when, but sometime in the past month or so he started pointing with his index finger instead of with his whole hand:

But we can’t get the little bugger to wave.

I’m still trying to get good video of a couple of things. He dances (basically bounces up and down) whenever he hears music, and it doesn’t matter what kind of music. He’ll dance to rock, jazz, classical, the Jeopardy theme song, whatever. He also throws his diapers away in the diaper genie. Of course, if we don’t watch him he’ll take them back out again…

He’s such a cool kid – I think we’ll keep him!

Breakfast at the Beachcomber

We took Calvin to the Beachcomber at Crystal Cove State Beach for breakfast this morning. He ate the food we brought for him, plus nearly a whole pumpkin pancake (1/3 of my breakfast!). He never eats that much in one sitting – I wonder what they’re putting in those cakes?

He was fascinated with the baby girl at the  next table:

He got to see a Christmas tree and a snowsandman on the beach:

All in all, a lovely morning!

Calvin’s First Birthday

Calvin turned one today! 

We were originally thinking we’d have a big party, but he’s teething again and he’s been really cranky – we didn’t want to risk a meltdown. So we just had a small party – didn’t even have all the family – and as it turns out Calvin did great, even without a morning nap.

I made some cupcakes:

and Calvin ate one:

He was a little tentative at first:

But he caught on eventually:

It was a great day!

Boy behaving badly

Does this look like the face of a playground bully?

Today Calvin and I went to Irvine Regional Park with my friend Victoria and her son, Abner, who is a month older than Calvin. Unfortunately, Calvin’s going through a really fun hair-pulling and face-clawing phase, and Abner, who’s a total sweetie (and smart to boot – he talks and communicates really well), had to play with Devil Calvin today. We’ve been trying to teach Cal to be gentle but it’s not sinking in. He thinks it’s really funny when we get upset because he hurts us (little dude is strong – you definitely don’t want him grabbing ahold of your hair).

But we did get to ride on a train, and visit the zoo, and play with some goats in the petting zoo. At least, Abner played with the goats. Calvin tormented the goats. Here I am trying to show him how to pet GENTLY:

But every chance he got he grabbed as hard as he could with both hands, and the goats were smart enough to start avoiding him so by the end he was just chasing goats around the enclosure.

After that we went to a big open area with grass and trees and paved paths so the boys could run around for awhile. We tried to take some photos, but it’s very hard to corral a couple of one-year-olds and get them to hold still for 2 seconds.

V managed to catch us all looking more or less at the camera, though:

And Calvin  gave V some snuggles to prove he’s not REALLY demon spawn:

Calvin’s first Christmas, pt. 1

We had a great Christmas with Calvin. He doesn’t really get the concept, but had a good time hanging out with the family and opening presents – he especially likes tearing the wrapping paper. Doesn’t care quite so much about the gifts, though:

He got lots of good loot, though. My sister sent him a feather duster, which he loves (he doesn’t get that from me!).

We got him a couple of wooden animals as stocking stuffers. Here he is trying to make his Florida relatives proud by biting the head off a gator:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll be posting more pics and video – we took a lot of video and I’m still going through it all looking for the best clips to post. Stay tuned!

Calvin the climber

This week Calvin figured out how to climb up onto the couch by himself. Oh, joy.

The cushion at the end of the couch has been removed because Calvin also figured out that he could climb up onto the arm of the couch and get onto the computer desk. We are moving the coffee table out of the room because he’s showing other daredevil tendencies, like just walking off the couch when the mood strikes him and assuming one of us will catch him, even if we happen to be across the room at the time.

When he’s developing a new skill like this, he gets baby OCD – he just repeats the same actions over and over and over. He does laps on and off the couch. He climbs in and out of the laundry basket or the magazine basket or the tv armoire. It can be hilarious, but when he’s trying to do something we don’t want him to do, it turns into a contest of wills. Fun for everyone!

He’s also really into tossing or throwing things around. He entertained himself thoroughly at my office holiday party by tossing a flashlight around. He was cracking himself up – very cute. Here’s a video of him chasing a ball around at home:

He’s pretty good at entertaining himself. He has his clingy moments for sure, but he’s got a big independent streak. Right now his biggest frustration is that he can’t do everything he wants to do by himself. He’s very determined, though – he’ll have it all figured out before too long. God help us all!

Little red wagon