William at 12 months: Milestones aplenty

Yesterday was a big day for Master William. For the past two weeks or so, he's been taking a tentative step or two here and there. Every day he gets stronger, cruises faster, stands longer, and generally seems ready to take off running. Yesterday evening Daddy, who was witness to the very first step, enticed him to take a few more steps and this time there was nothing tentative about it. He walked quite strongly across most of the living room and the whole family was there to see it. Of course, he had no interest in repeating it for the camera. Crawling is ever so much faster, you see. So instead I got the great video of our newly minted four-year old reading. Excellence all around!

As if that wasn't enough of a milestone, yesterday was the day William finally demonstrated his competence at feeding himself. Last week he deemed Mum-Mums worthy of picking up and eating. Maybe the crunch was satisfying for those four new teeth. I had never heard of them before last month when I bought them in a spree of grabbing every toddler snack in the baby aisle, hoping that they would inspire self feeding. Theorizing that maybe crispy round things were his thing, I tried some generic Ritz crackers at lunch yesterday. Success. He grabbed them and ate with relish. By dinner, he was an eating machine. Crackers, yes. Pasta, yes, but what else do you have. Ham? Yes, yes and yes! Breakfast this morning was a blur of rapidly consumed zucchini bread. (Thanks, Grandma!) As anticipated, the problem is now that he shoves too much into his mouth at once and gets crabby if anyone tries to do it for him. Anna decided she needed to serve him yogurt today, though, and he seemed happier to let her feed him than if I was doing it. Aside from the vast quantity of yogurt on his face, this worked out fine.

Meanwhile Erik and I labeled his school supplies yesterday. Today we went to Target to get the last few items, including red scissors. Foolish me for thinking orange would be adequate. Since we still needed to get Dixie cups for Anna's list, I was willing to humor him. No doubt in my mind that someone in this house will use the orange ones at some point.

So, a walking little boy, a reading little girl and a first grader. Whew.