Julian - 15.5 months

This is the high chair I want

Juliansville

There have been so many changes in Juliansville, population: 1. For starters, he is now down to one sleep per day, which is anywhere from 2-3 hours. This is actually fantastic, because it means that you're not limited to doing stuff in the morning. There's no need to race home for a sleep. This morning, he had a great time venturing out with his Nana Minnie. They went to toy shops (three, apparently!) as well as a bagel place, where he chupped down a savoury pastry. They had a brilliant time.

And, he's speaking up a storm. Every day, he has two, three, four new words in his vocabulary. The other day, it was "sandwich," "glasses" and "woodpecker." (Mainly because of words in his books.) Today it was "bagel" (see adventure with Nana Minnie, above). He adores his books, even though he pulls them to pieces (requiring open page surgery on one pop-up, where the sides of it had to be sliced open, fixed and then stitched up).

Walking is another story. He's nowhere near walking, although he crawls up a storm. Today, for the first time, he made quite a few steps holding onto my hands. But he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to walk, although he's an awesome climber. He could scale Mt. Everest in a heartbeat, I reckon. At least, he makes it from the floor to the couch to the tabletop in a nanosecond.

He's lots of fun, right now. It's a great, rewarding age.

Mummy and me

 
 

Julian at the aquarium - 15 months

Moving forward

Last week, I had to hand in an article about baby blogging for a parenting magazine. Most of the blogs I mentioned were ones where the babies were young. As the babies got older, the blogs changed, until they got to be more about household stuff, mother stuff and marriage stuff. I started this blog for Julian to get a sense of his first year, and I think my job is almost done. I can see it transforming into something else, and when it does, it will be time to close shop. Our lives are moving into a new phase, and it seems like the baby year is over. It's the end of an era in other ways: 2006 is about to start, my father is gone, we've battled various challenges in recent months, and life moves forward.

I hope Julian reads this one day and learns not only the little things he did, but who we were as parents. I hope he gets a sense of how he transformed our lives for the better, and the depth of our love for him. I hope he reads between the lines and knows that every time we heard him gurgle over the monitor, our faces got warm, and our hearts felt full. Spending the day with him feels like such a privilege. He has endless smiles and good cheer for his loved ones. He has a way of making everyone feel special.

My baby isn't such a baby anymore. He now has an ever-developing sense of humour, even if the funniest thing on earth is poking his finger into my ear or pinching my nose, and squealing. He has a growing vocabulary, literally saying one or two new words a day. He is crawling on all fours now, but not walking. There are still things to update, new milestones to record, but perhaps I'll do that differently. I'm not signing off just yet, but stay tuned...

Big hair, big smile, big teeth - nearly 15 months