Friday, January 2, 2009

Christian Turns 14 Months Old

Today our lil' guy turns 14 months old. I'm amazed at how sometimes he looks more like a "little boy" than a baby.

Most of our readers probalby want to know if Christian is walking and talking yet. The answer is: not yet.

Christian has shown no interest in walking. He crawls everywhere at lightening speed and is very good at pulling himself to standing ... but he won't let go of whatever he's holding onto. When we've tried to pry him away from holding onto an object so he can stand on his own, he just squats back down to the ground.

Christian still hasn't said his official first word, but when he wakes up in the middle of the night, Jonathan swears Christian is crying for, "Mommmmmmmmmmmmm." Sounds like it ... but I don't know if its intentional or just coincidence.


He loves to babble, babble, babble ... and in the past couple of days has figured out how to whisper. Its sooo cute!

Christian makes us laugh a lot and one of his new funny things to do is squint his eyes shut and crawl to - or on - something. He knows where his destination is, and so he shuts his eyes tight and gets there ... and then opens his eyes again. Its especially charming when we are his destination! He's really good about crawling to us and hugging us or sitting in our laps. It just makes our hearts melt!

He's also big on grabbing our fingers and taking us to something he wants us to do, such as read a book, or play with one of his toys.

And, alas, as Christian's personality continues developing, so does his impatience. Like kids his age often do, he gets easily frustrated at times. But its all part of the process.

Mealtime has become quite a struggle in the Lucero Household. Its a fine line between catering to picky baby and making sure he eats enough. He's mostly drawn to "white foods" like bananas, string cheese, bread, etc. I've read its an actual thing that some small children do ... they'll only eat white foods. We've tried - and continue to try - a variety of foods. Some days he feels adventurous and eats something different ... but most days, he'll have nothing to do with a new food. So sometimes what we end up doing is hiding nutritious food in a bit of bread. He'll eat it just about every time.

And he doesn't like us to feed him with a spoon/fork anymore - with an exception here and there. We've tried getting him to use his own utensils, but he's not interested.

We bought a book called, "The Sneaky Chef," which is about how to get children to eat nutritious food when its hidden in foods they will actually eat. As they say, "necessity is the motherhood of invention." So we'll keep trying creative ways to get Christian to eat.

Enjoy a quick video of Christian swinging (and a couple of happy baby snorts)!