I learned to laugh and crawl, then sit and stand. Now I can walk if you hold my hand! The fun has only begun. Look out world. I’m ONE!
It happened, just like I knew it would. Quinten turned one on Sunday! It was a whirlwind event, from last-minute planning to even more last-minute baking. Our weekend was busy, but luckily our plan was pretty simple. Soup, sandwiches, and cake. None of which were prepared prior to Sunday. It was a bit of a scramble, but we made it happen. Maximus and I baked two cakes on Sunday morning and made frosting for both of them. He picked red and blue, just like his birthday cakes. It’s unknown if he every fully understood that we weren’t making the cakes for him. I tried to prepare Maximus for what I assumed to be The Great Present Opening Fiasco. He seemed to think Quinten was “too big” to open presents. {Just when I thought he was a big kid, he consistently said his baby brother was too big for something.} Being the good big brother that he is his father’s son, he had a plan. Maximus would open all the presents! I came up with a compromise and told him he could help only if Quinten wasn’t getting it. It went ok. They each opened half the presents. We’re definitely still working on sharing the toys. We’re not very good at it. Well, I’m good at it and Bryan is good at it. It’s our children who are not good at it. They are ok with our old boring toys that “have always been for Maximus,” and they are awful at the new, exciting ones. That technically belong to Quinten. Whatever.
Quinten started the birthday celebration by SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! That gets all the capital letters. ALL OF THEM. You guys, I’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen. He doesn’t get all the credit, Bryan started it on Friday with “tough love.” I was at an Ugly Sweater party {I get a mommy of the year award, obvi} and Bryan decided he wasn’t going to hang out with Quinten every three hours. That’s how bad it had gotten. My baby sucked at sleeping. Every three hours he would scream {and scream and scream}. Over the past four-six weeks he backed off his milk intake. He pushed it out to 4-5 hours. So, when he was waking every three, he wasn’t looking for milk. He was looking for comfort. I suppose Bryan decided that he didn’t like the crankiness that had taken over our house, so he tried to fix it. {He’s a fixer. 🙂 } Anyway, Quinten screamed a lot that night, apparently. Bryan stuck to his plan and never went in there. Saturday night we were gone until 1 am {can I get two mommy of the year awards for the same weekend?} so I was nervous that Friday was for nothing. Nope! He rocked it and went to bed for my parents at 8 and didn’t wake up until 8:10! HE EVEN SLEPT IN ON HIS BIRTHDAY! I declared it an awesome day and gave him all the milk with promises of all the cake…after he ate his lunch. He doesn’t pass up food so he obliged.
He did a good job opening the presents that he was given. He did yell at me when I took away an envelope that he was chewing on. It was nice of him to show the audience that he doesn’t do well with people telling him what to do. {Bryan and I agree to disagree about the origin of his attitude.} He loved playing with his toys, when Maximus let him. Lots of noises and lights. Some toys to cruise around with. He’s been into standing up and walking with the assistance of a hand or toy, so this is the perfect time for him. I remember being super nervous when Maximus got walking toys for his birthday. Quinten has been pulling himself up for months so we’re feeling a little more confident about his ability to not break. He’s also got 10 more pounds than Maximus did. He doesn’t have his well-baby visit for another week, but last I checked he weighted 26 pounds. Yes, twenty-six pounds. We’re not blaming it on big bones either. He’s chunky. It’s the best! I forget how adorable it is until he’s cruising around in a diaper or sitting in the bathtub looking like a fat buddha. The poor kid barely has any professional pictures with clothes on because I love the fat rolls too much. Twenty-six pounds means he wears 12 or 18 month clothes and sometimes 2T.
Other things my one-year-old is doing. Biting! It’s not fun. He thinks it’s fun and laughs after he does it. I recently became the owner of a Quinten shaped mouth bruise on my thigh. I was not happy with him. He basically fell on me as he was crawling over my legs. I didn’t see it coming because he was trying to get back up. BAM! He bit me and I yelled and pulled him off. He laughed and stuck a toy in his mouth. So I did what any other mother would do when living with a baby who doesn’t care that you swat his mouth, I took the toy out of his hand and made him cry. If you want to make it out alive, you gotta get to the source of their happiness.
He’s ornery in other ways too, besides the whole not sleeping thing. He’s a super fast crawler. He uses it when he’s planning on doing naughty things like crawl for the stairs that lead to the basement, bite/chew/hit/pull on Wrigley, pull on the blinds, bang on the fireplace, mess with the Christmas lights, bother Wrigley when he’s eating, or dump over Wrigley’s water dish. He also likes to play with cars, ruins Maximus’ train setup, chew on tables, walk along furniture, drink out of Maximus’ water bottle, and bang on things (windows, tables, toys, and faces). He has the loudest belly laugh and squeals when you tickle him. He loves taking a bath and spends the whole time splashing water all over the bathroom, standing up, or trying to drown himself by going face-first after a toy. {Like bobbing for apples.} He hates having his diaper changed or putting clothes on. Not in the crying sort of way, but in the way that he basically out muscles me. For the past five or six months, I’ve had to put him on the floor and pin his legs under mine. Almost every time he pulls away from me and gets a limb loose. With Maximus we used to trade-off because it was just awful to change him. With Quinten it’s awful to contain him. We thought we’d have easy diaper changes until after one. Guess not!
He loves food. He shovels it in by the fistful. He has recently started to put food on a spoon. He’s not quite coordinated enough to get it on there AND into his mouth. He drinks cold milk out of a sippy cup with his meals. Depending on his mood, he either drinks water or opens his mouth and lets it fall out. That’s fun, too. He still nurses to sleep, which has been part of our {my} problem with our nights. It’s hard to sleep when your baby needs you all the time. We’re taking a little break from middle of the night nursing sessions so he can work on sleeping. Although, nighttime nursing is the easiest nursing. During the day he’s usually trying to stand on his head or belly dance. Bryan looked over at me last night and laughed because Quinten was high-fiving me repeatedly. What Bryan didn’t see before that was him trying to rip my lip off and pull my hair. Nursing isn’t for the weak, yo. He also thinks it’s funny to do an unmentionable thing with his teeth if he’s bored. Remember when I said he laughs when he bites? Yah, same thing applies here. I can’t tell you how many times I say, “No! It’s not funny!” I’m not ending our nursing relationship just yet, but hopefully we can find a happy balance of calmness and nursing. Otherwise I may need to reconsider! He won’t be getting cows milk anytime soon, because he’s still working on milk from May. 🙂 It’s his own fault because he was a pig when we first started this venture. Hopefully we’ll continue with his good health. Other than a couple of colds, he’s fared pretty well so far this cold season. Meanwhile, Maximus had a round of double-ear infection that took three meds to get rid of.
So, Quinten is one. Those first ten months seemed to go slow. We were very much in the routine of keeping him alive with milk. The past few months he’s become more of a playful {naughty} baby so it’s gone a lot faster. There’s not much time for doing anything for ourselves. Between a three-year-old and one-year-old, we’re pretty much in the Take Care of Children phase. Quinten is on to new adventures of learning how to walk on his own and hopefully also sleeping on his own! He’s taking up all the “extra” time we had and ensuring that we collapse on the couch at the end of every day. He’s been working hard the past few months to ensure that he is our last baby, but we’ll see if we can turn that around. But don’t even think about asking me until I can answer a baby sleep question without remembering that he spent the first year of his life NOT SLEEPING. I can only imagine what the next year looks like. I’m preparing myself for the chaos and messes that lie ahead. After all, my house is not quite or toy-free. It is full of laughter, love, and happiness. The laundry and vacuuming can wait because babies don’t keep.
