Happy birthday Luke!

How are we to this day already? It seems like just yesterday that we met our little bundle of joy and now he's becoming a toddler. We had no idea just how much he would change our lives and how much joy we would experience this year. It has been, in a word, amazing. It obviously hasn't all been super easy (hello, 5 ear infections and 2 dislocated elbows!) but we wouldn't change any of it for the world.

On to what our little man is doing now!

His year checkup isn't until next Tuesday, but weighed at home this morning he was 24lbs, 3oz. I'm not sure how tall he is at all.

He has a whopping 9 (yes, 9) teeth and is working on at least 1 of the other molars right now.

He's still sleeping great at night - goes down easily and unless he's sick - doesn't wake up until morning (about 11 1/2 hours.) Napping is a completely different story and is a struggle every day - especially days at school. He is just go-go-go and doesn't want to miss any of the action.

He eats a mixture of table food and purees, depending on his mood for the day. One day he ate half of a chicken sandwich at school. A few days later he threw one on the ground. Such a little turkey. We can pretty much always count on yogurt or yogurt melts though.

For the past 2 weeks he's been completely off the bottle! Still just formula, but all out of the sippy cup at breakfast, snack time, lunch, snack time, and dinner. We weren't really planning on it - it just sort of happened. We thought we'd try dropping the morning bottle and just doing a sippy with breakfast. That went so well that we did it the rest of the day and haven't looked back! Once he gets off of his current antibiotic (5th ear infection) then we're going to try some whole milk.

Speaking of ear infections - we have an appointment with an ENT in a little over a week to talk about tubes. I just feel so bad for the little guy!

Things he loves to do right now:
Clap - especially when he realized he's getting something he wants (yogurt melts, a sippy cup, signing time dvd)

Wave at people and sign milk - it can get very confusing as waving and signing milk look similar. When I get him in the morning is he waving at me? Or telling me he wants breakfast? (Probably both!)

He loves anything with buttons - remote control, Xbox controller, buttons on the tv, mommy's cell phone (he has so far made successful calls to grandma, Uncle Pat, and daddy)

He loves music - banging on his toy piano, banging on the real piano, beating anything like a drum ... Sometimes, but not always - when he hears music he'll start to bounce up and down like he's dancing.

He is crawling the "right" way now - up on his hands and knees. He cruises along furniture like a pro, and will take some steps if we're holding his hands.

He babbles all the time - says mama and dada and I think tried to say ball the other day while watching Signing Time (ba!) Otherwise it's a lot of babbles and yells. Sometimes he'll have little conversations - changing tone and inflection - just like he knows what he's saying.

We wanted to write a letter to Luke each year on his birthday. The official one will be in his baby book, but I thought what we started was pretty funny. See if you can tell where I stopped and Jason took over. :)

Luke,
Happy birthday sweet baby boy! This past year has been the most amazing year of our lives and we love you so much!

Daddy wants you to know that he loves you and will always be your best friend. He can't wait for you to get a little older so you can hang out with him in the garage and work on the cars (Nissan's only!). Make sure you are always a good boy and while you will most likely always be the center of attention anywhere you go, don't get to cocky. You'll never be funnier, smarter, better or better looking than daddy.

Love you buddy,
Daddy and Mommy