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.

Dinner time blues

This adorable young man REFUSES to feed himself, despite totally mastery of the cup, a delight in mushing food all over the place, and no refusal to anything coming his way via spoon. He will happily crawl across dry grass to play in dirt and mulch, delights in the bathtub (and dog dishes) and grabs anything and everything he can find, so we're not looking at a tactile sensitivity issues near as I can tell. He can throw a ball with accuracy, so I'm pretty sure the fine motor skills are developing well. What I do know is he's the only baby his age -- 11 months -- who isn't feeding himself. Most likely, he's on his own timeline. He eats every meal with us, but the best way to get attention is, of course, refusing to feed himself. He's already learned how to push mom's buttons. (Side note, whoever came up with the parenting advice of not letting kids get a rise out of you, come up with something else. When the kids annoy me, I appear annoyed. Seems like the world could use a little more honesty about emotions, rather than less, but I digress.) Unfortunately, this refusal to put the food in his hands into his mouth is making his parents a little crazy because it just seems odd. We're considering putting a stack of Oreos on his tray, just to entice him, but he will probably just throw them on the floor, like he throws everything on the floor. Seems like a waste of a good cookie to me. So, chances are that this soon-to-be one year old will end up with very little birthday cake unless he gets this eating thing figured out soon. Feed yourself already, kid!