Seriously, where has the time gone??  Our baby has turned into a toddler!  We have written up our first birthday invitations (a simple lunch in a nearby park with his toddler friends) but I am yet to send them out.  I’ve been reading the Mighty Toddler by Robin Barker, and she’s scaring me with what toddlers get up to.  I hope I have enough patience to get through!  He is such a serious child though, we have to work hard to get him to smile…though he will happily smile at strangers after first giving them his serious stare!

In the last couple of weeks Nathan has been working on his walking.  He does a lot of standing for long periods of time now, he happily walks while hanging onto one or two of our hands, and regularly takes several steps on his own. I’m sure it won’t be long before he starts walking places instead of crawling.

Nathan is very helpful when we ask him to help.  He will help pack up his toys, help put carrot sticks into the steamer, and help put pegs away when I take washing off the line.  He just loves being around the action, and always has, but nowdays I stand him on a chair when I am working in the kitchen so he can see what is going on and be involved.  Don’t worry, I am very careful and position the chair and myself so that he can’t fall off and knives are kept far away from his reach.

The falls and bumps and bruises have started, and currently Nathan has a nice little bruise and lump on his forehead after bumping his head a couple of nights ago on our bed head.

He is also starting to sleep longer than 40 minutes during the day, though it is not yet a daily occurance.  Usually when he has a long sleep (up to 2.5 hours!) is in the afternoon, but he has occasionally had a long sleep in the morning.  I just hope it becomes more common, I”ve been waiting a long time for Nathan to sleep a decent amount of time during the day on a regular basis!!  Maybe he just loves sleeping on his gorgeous new space sheets that he got for Christmas!  Mind you, night sleeps have been a bit erratic lately and I am starting to wonder if he is no longer comfortable in the hammock.

Breastfeeding is a changing experience.  Nathan still loves to breastfeed, and he practically pants in excitement when I ask him if he wants any milk.  He doesn’t necessarily lie down to feed now, though I usually make him lie down.  I don’t have too many problems with his teeth, but occasionally they graze me and they are sharp little things!  Ouch!  His pinching during feeding has become worse lately and I resort to using my breastfeeding necklace on a regular basis now.

There is a great playground near us at Sydney Park (would be even better if there was shade there) that has an elevated sand pit.  Nathan has had his first experience at playing in sand at this park and after trying to eat it a couple of times I think he finally got the hang of keeping it out of his mouth.  It was very cute watching his fascination with this stuff that stuck to his hands.  We have since been to the beach for Nathan’s first experience in the ocean, and he seemed to enjoy playing in the sand on the beach too.

We bought a plastic shell during a hot spell last week and put it on the balcony with a couple of buckets worth of water in it for Nathan to cool down in.  Nathan thought it was pretty good, though the water was a little cold for him at first.  We just added a bucket of warm water and he had his bath in it one warm evening.  I’m looking forward to using it more this week when the warm weather returns.

Toy planes get waved around Nathan’s head, cars are driven on the ground, and we think he is saying banana, or at least the ‘nana’ part of the word.  He adores bananas and recently has started saying ‘nana’ when he has a banana.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Nathan's first year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.