Life sure is fun with a one year old!

The big birthday has now come and gone and we marked the occasion by having family portraits taken in the morning and spending the afternoon visiting with Nonee and Papa. Uncle Dan joined our festivities for dinner and the singing of Happy Birthday and Shawn came by after his soccer game in the evening for cake and ice-cream. Jamie bought me beautiful flowers to mark the occasion and overall it was a terrific day!

Since his birthday Sebastian is now napping only 1x/day. Prior to this he was napping in the morning for approx. 1.5 hours and then another 1.5 hours in the afternoon. In the past I would stay home in the morning in order for him to have his coveted nap (I'm not one of those mom's whose baby's schedule is dependent on what the mom wants to do...). But since he's gone down to one nap I have been finding it much easier to plan our day. For example, yesterday we spent the morning at Riverdale Farm and on Tuesday we were able to get to the Farmer's Market bright and early. Even with longer naps in the afternoon he still continues to go down for the night around 7 and he is continuing to sleep through the night without any difficulties. No complaints here!!

A lot of people have been asking us recently if Sebastian is walking yet. He's not yet walking independently but he can walk around with little assistance, usually just holding one of our fingers on each hand for support. I'm hoping that by the end of the month he has taken a few independent steps, but that's because I'm selfish. I am returning to work part-time on Nov 1st and there is no way I want his first steps to occur at his caregivers home! I'm just going to tell her not to tell me if it happens! Ignorance in this regard is bliss!

Anyways, the reason why I sat down to update the blog today was to give a quick update on the activities that a one year old Sebastian enjoys. So enough of my ramblings on about how cool it is to have a one year old... this is basically what our lil' pumpkin enjoys doing at the moment:

• taking the dishtowels and pots & pans out of our kitchen cupboards (this will entertain him for a long time... he takes out the dishtowels one by one, gives them to me, I say "thank you" and it sounds like he says "you're welcome" and when they are all out, we put them back in and the process repeats itself. For the pots & pans, we just bang them and put various items in them to see what neat sounds they make and of course, we have tons of fun seeing who can bang them the loudest!)
• playing ball, in which he will throw the ball to us and we will roll it back to him
• repeating what we are saying to the best of his ability
• pretending to talk on the phone
• playing with his musical instruments, including banging/drumming various objects together
• placing different items into various things (i.e., wooden objects into his plastic pail) to see what fits and what noises they make when they get stirred around.
• imitating actions to songs (i.e., clapping his hands as soon as we started singing "If you're happy and you know it")
• giving lots of sloppy kisses
• playing in the sandbox and being pushed on the swings
• playing with his wooden tractor in which he drives it along the floor saying "vroom vroom"
• getting to the front door as fast as he can to see the bus stopping across the street from our house as well as to watch any emergency vehicle speed by as soon as he can hear their sirens (at which point he imitates the sound... it's so nice having our own little fire engine!)
• and of course...walking around with our assistance!
  

I'm sure there are tons more to add, but these are the major things that put a big smile on his face at the moment.

Well, Sebastian just awoke from his nap so I am off to start our grand adventures of the day. These include having a delicious lunch of lima beans (I put that there for Jamie - he is not fond of lima beans!), carrots and banana, a trip to the store to buy swimmers for our swimming classes that commence this Saturday and then hopefully a visit with our mommies & babes from the public health group we attended last winter.

Hoping your day is filled with playful moments,
Kim