How old is Dylan?

Thanks to much coaching and practice, if you asked Dylan this question today he'd wave his little hand around and eventually hold up one finger. I'm trying to get it on video, but haven't been successful so far.

My baby is officially one year old!

I can't believe it's been a year...but another part of me can't remember life without our little man.

Dylan's 12-month appointment isn't until next week, so I don't have stats, but here are some other fun facts about the boy:

Getting around: Dylan finally realized how exhausting (and painful, I'm sure) it was to crawl around like a walrus and decided one day he preferred the standard hands-and-knees method...and when motivated he can move pretty fast. He generally prefers the wait and see approach to things--he waits to see if what he wants will come to him (e.g. Mom, food, ball, toys). He loves to pull up on anything and everything he can find, so we've had our fair share of head bonks, but he's getting better. I don't think walking is in our near future...

Teeth: After teething for what felt like months, two tiny little teeth are barely poking through on the bottom. Based on the length of what we thought was his teething, we expected him to get 8 at once!

Eating: This may be a surprise, but Dylan LOVES food! I have only ever seen him turn away food once and after sampling it myself I understand why (side note: Gerber pick-ups raviolis are disgusting... I'll post a video as proof later).

"Talking": Dylan calls pretty much everything he sees "dada" but he uses different tones and inflection to help us know what he means... For example, "a-Da" means all done (which he only ever uses to tell us his bottle is empty and he'd like more). He uses "ma" and "mama" only when he's tired or whiny. He knows how to say baby, but it takes a little coaching to remind him he knows how. And I swear he knows duck and dog, but they sound very similar to everything else, so who knows...

Other randomness:

• He LOVES cars, but he especially loves real cars...moving ones. If he could, he'd spend all day out on the busy street near our neighborhood pointing and squealing as the cars went by.
• He's an open mouth kisser, and once he hears the word "kiss" he opens wide and dive bombs your face...
• He plays with his hair when he's sleepy. Since he has so little hair, he pretty much just pinches little pieces.
• He still uses a pacifier for sleeping. I know this has to end someday...
  
• He knows what a fish says. However, he learned this from the stuffed blowfish hanging in our garage (that's a story for another time). So if you ask him what a fishy says, he'll tell you and then point up at the ceiling because to him fish live in the sky...
• He knows what a cow says...except he says boo instead of moo. At least we've got the "oo" part down.
• He loves other people's hair, especially long hair. He likes to grab sections of my hair and let it run through his hands.
• He does not dance to music. I think we've trained him that it's our job to dance for him whenever music comes on. So whenever he hears music, he looks at the nearest person as if waiting for you to dance...
• He knows how to wave hi and bye to everyone now, so he's quite a hit when we go out.
• He's starting to dislike car rides... I'm hoping a new car seat and a new view will help him get over this before we drive to my parents' for Christmas...

I think I'll stop there... I can record the rest in his baby book.

At Dylan's birthday party (which was last weekend while my parents were in town), we had a Wall of Dylan, which included a picture collage for every month of his life thus far, which I'm going to share with the blogging world. Enjoy!

Birth Day

December

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

We're so happy we have Dylan as part of our family, and we can't wait to see what this next year brings.