12 month Update

12 month update…. where did the time go? Let’s see what this little guy has been up to:

1. Walking- Major! He started walking just 3 days shy from his 1st birthday. We thought he would never walk. He has been standing up pretty good without support and would take 1 step but he would not move any further. We tried encouraging him but he would still take 1 step and then leap forward. So we were surprised when he finally had the courage to take more than 1 step. He didn’t just take a couple steps, he just went for it. He took many many steps. Of course, John and I were beyond ecstatic.
2. Food- It is a struggle to get him to eat sometimes. It seems like the older he gets the harder it is to feed him. He also seems to throw up a lot. At one point, he threw up at almost every meal. It didn’t seem to bother him because after he throws up, he is back to laughing and giggling, all happy. It’s almost seem like an act of rebellion toward us. It’s like him saying “Hey, enough, I told you I am not interested in eating. Please stop feeding me or I’ll vomit all over the floor.” Whatever, I digress! Now we can kind of tell from his facial expression when he is about to throw up. We have to stop feeding him and let him rest for a little bit before continue feeding him if we know that he has only had a little. If he has enough, we stop feeding him even though he didn’t eat as much as we would like him to. He still likes pureed food over chunky food. He doesn’t seem to like to chew. He choked a few times and threw up because he swallowed his food without chewing. If we let him feed himself, he would chew his food. Maybe we should have just let him feed himself when comes to chunky food, but then again, he doesn’t eat much when he feeds himself. At least not to our expectation. Thankfully, we still haven’t seen any food allergy reaction from him yet.
3. Teeth- He still has 8 teeth, 4 on top and 4 at the bottom. There  is no sign of molars yet.
4. Personality- He is a very happy baby. Many people comment at what a happy little boy he is. He has the most infectious laugh ever! I just love it when he is laughing up a storm. He is also a very sociable baby. He is not afraid of strangers. Anyone can carry him although he doesn’t smile much with strangers. Wait, I take it back. It depends on his mood actually. I have seen him on some occasions, all smiley and chatty with strangers.
5. Play- He still loves to put things in his mouth but he is getting better at playing with his hands. His newest thing now is pressing a button. Everything he touches, he presses his fingers on it as if there is a button there.
6. Belly Button- He loves it. He presses my belly button, he presses John’s belly button… except for his own. He especially loves it when we make sounds each time he presses on it.
7. Books- He still expresses no interest in it. He doesn’t really likes book very much. He vastly prefers his toys over books. Very very sad… I hope this will change as he grows older.
8. Speech- Loud. He is very loud and babbles all day long. We are afraid to take him to the restaurants now, because he would scream and throw tantrum if he gets bored. He also has this thing that when he crawls, he makes noise, like “ah, ah , ah, ah, ah” as if announcing that he is coming. You can hear him all the way from another room that he is coming as his “ah, ah, ah” sounds become louder.
9. Words- He still doesn’t say many words yet sadly, except for the basic mama, ta-ta, da-da, mum-mum, uh-oh and etc. We would like to believe that he knows how to say “bath time” and “all done” because when we say it, he repeats it. Although it doesn’t sound quite right, the tone is there. We would also like to blame it on language confusion because I sometimes speak Mandarin to him and John of course speaks English to him all the time. So his delayed in speech development, we blame it on that, be it or not.
10. Sleep- It’s getting worse. We have created a bad habit of co-sleeping with him ever since my brother visited back in mid- Dec. When he fusses in the middle of the night, we bring him to bed with us. We love it because we get to snuggle with him at night and we play together in bed when we wake up in the morning. He used to hate sleeping in our bed but now he loves it. We would put him down in his crib at 7-7:30pm. He would sleep and if he wakes up in the middle of the night, we bring him to bed with us. Sometimes, he doesn’t wake up and sleeps through the next day but that only happens maybe once a week. I don’t see any harm in it right now, but I think eventually we will have to stop this bad habit.