He's 1!

How did this happen? How did he get to be 1? Arg, I'm clearly getting old, sitting here talking about how time goes too quickly, and how kids grow up too fast. But it's true!! He's 1! My baby somehow turned 1 today.

To capture this moment before it passes and we're celebrating his 16th birthday, here's a few things about him right now:

*He crawls ridiculously quickly, but then gets serious and lowers his head (to decrease wind resistance), and goes into super speed. Sometimes he plows right into things.

*He refuses to even attempt to walk on his own. Just not interested.

*He LOVES food. Upon being put in his high chair he expects food to appear immediately. If it doesn't he starts to do this move where it looks like his head is going to explode and he's trying to squeeze an imaginary beach ball.

*When he's done eating, he clears his tray using his arms like windshield wipers. It's effective.

*His favorite book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" He really loves to help turn the pages. And he turns around and makes goldfish mouths at me on that page. So cute.

*He loves to be upside-down.

*He's obsessed with climbing on everything. It's a disaster. I left the room for a minute, came back and found him climbing onto the piano keys. This is leading to a lot of falling. Thankfully nothing bad so far but he doesn't really get that it's not a good idea.

*He thinks his sisters are hilarious. He loves it when they try to make him laugh. He's not so fond of them picking him up or of

them trying to keep him from doing something he wants to do.

*His blankie signals bedtime to him. He can't resist the silkiness when he's tired. If we merely toss it on the floor, he crawls over to it, leans down, and starts rubbing his head on it.

*He loves to fold his arms when we pray. He does it once at the beginning, periodically throughout the prayer, and then quickly when we say amen as if to say he was folding them all along.

*He loves cars. He has just started to say "vroom,

 vroom" when he pushes them back and forth.

*He loves to roll/throw a ball back and forth. Most of the time he drops it on his foot and it rolls to you and he smiles huge, very proud of himself. But it is the thing that keeps his attention the longest.

*He likes to stand at our screen door and wave goodbye to his daddy. In fact, after watching him drive away each day, he has started to wave at any car that drives past. He has even started saying "da" in reference to Coop.

*For months whenever we tried to get him to say Mama he'd blow a raspberry. Now he just ignores the request altogether.

*He has 1 1/2 teeth - making him the first of our children to have a tooth before they learned to walk.

*He likes to dance to music. So far his favorite is the samba music in the new animated movie Rio. He shimmies. Seriously.

*We have a Sesame Street toy where Elmo sings
ABC when you push a button. He's pretty much

become reliant on it in the car. However, he never lets the song finish before he pushes it again. When he's particularly agitated, he pushes it, starting the song over, every few seconds.

*He really likes to put the rocks in front of our house in his mouth. He looks at me each time he does, waiting for me to say no, then he tosses it, picks up a new one, and does it again.

*He's very interested in my teeth. He likes to touch them when I'm singing him to sleep. Then he starts to try to dig them out with his nails.

*Sometimes instead of laughing he does a big, open-mouthed smile and makes this slow, audible intake of breath sound. Don't know how else to describe it. Just weird.

*He loves to sit and flip through books by himself.

*He loves to open cupboards and empty them. Our collapsible strainer is his favorite. He also loves to climb inside the dishwasher. And he sprints towards the fridge anytime it's open.

*His feet and neck are extremely ticklish.

*He's a super happy baby, but not the friendliest. He can keep a straight face for a remarkable amount of time when a stranger, or even an extended family member that he hasn't seen in a few days, tries to make him smile.

Ok, I've indulged myself long enough. We love our little man. He's adorable. He's not a huge fan of birthdays though as a side note. Don't let these pictures deceive you. We first put the cupcake on his tray when we were home last weekend celebrating with family and when he reached for the candle, we all said no a little too loudly and scared him. He freaked out big time. It took 10 minutes to get him to stop crying and at least 30 to keep him from screaming at the sight of a cupcake. It took an insane amount of coaxing to convince him to eat it. But we persisted. We needed these cute pictures for posterity. And for me. We tried again tonight on his real birthday with a chocolate cake, so as not to bring up bad memories. He started whining when we sang to him, and refused to put a single bite in his mouth. He stuck his fingers in the frosting, then proceeded to try to shake it off, getting more and more frustrated when he couldn't get it off. It wasn't too long before he threw it all on the floor. Double failure. That makes us 0 for 3. Not a one of our kids have dug into their first birthday cake. What's with that? Oh well, Happy Birthday dude!