One year old

Edison turned one last Wednesday. We had a quiet celebration that night with just the three of us. We took Edison to the local toy store to pick out a book and a toy, went to our local brew pub for dinner, and then had a cupcake at home.

We had to abandon the effort pretty quickly after that and put him to bed. He did much better at the next two parties. More on those later this week.

We have Edison's one year check-up tomorrow. I expect him to be about 27 pounds and 31 inches, both of which are about the 95th percentile still. He's so big that people think he's two when they first meet him. He still has quite the cheeks, but has started to slim down now that he's so active. His hair is getting too long, but I can't bring myself to cut off his sweet blond curls yet. I have no idea where they came from, but I sure love them.

Edison is still a very sweet and happy baby. His personality just keeps getting better and better. His latest obsession (besides cords and strings) is cleaning. He is constantly crawling into the laundry room to get the dust mop. He also gets very excited when we vacuum. Best (or worst?) of all, we accidentally taught him to "wash it" and he actually tries to wipe down his high chair when he's done eating. He loves cell phones (he has destroyed two of them), his dog (she likes him for the easy access snacks), his mom (finally I win over dad!), "sneaking up" on dad, and anything to do with music.

Edison finally got his first tooth in March, just after turning nine months old. It was not one of the normal ones, but a "fang" on the top that looked pretty funny. He got three more on Easter Sunday and two more a week after that. For the record, that's six teeth in a month.  Ouch.

Edison started crawling at about 10 1/2 months.  It was a little sad to watch since he would have to stop to look up and see where he was going, then put his head down to crawl, then stop again to see, then start again.  Now it's like someone hit fast forward after his eye surgery.  He is super fast, gets into absolutely everything, and is suddenly trying to walk.  Yikes.  His is all boy, too.  He loves climbing stairs, going down slides head first, and wrestling his friend Connor at school.

Unfortunately, the one thing he is not good at is sleeping. I'm still up usually twice a night. The poor little guy has been sick so much, plus the surgery, that I just can't bring myself to let him cry for very long. I keep reminding myself that this won't last forever because someday he'll be a teenager.

Finally, I want to brag a little bit about myself. I was stubbornly determined to breastfeed Edison for a year. I made it. He never had a single bottle of formula. I made it through latch problems, plugged ducts, biting, four trips without him, even a 10-day nursing strike. I spent more hours than I care to guess hooked up to my pump, washing parts, and stressing about milk production. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Now he's about three quarters of the way weaned to cow milk and I am so ready to ditch my pump. Yay me! (For the record, I don't have anything against formula, it was just a choice I made and am proud of.)

And now for the pictures.  Since I was terrible at blogging the last few months, I'll post my favorite pictures of Edison for the months I missed in addition to this one.

10 months

11 months

12 months