Christine and I figured we should post an update about some of the things Jack is doing now that he’s a year old.

So, here it is…

As you can tell from that photo above, Jack is getting pretty inquisitive lately. He’s definitely asking us lots of questions. He asks by pointing and saying “uh?” We reward the questions with answers, telling him what he’s pointing at.

This has grown into Jack wanting things.

At dinner, Jack invariably starts asking Christine and I for our food (he eats the same thing we do, but he wants to eat off our plates) and our drinks… even though he has is own drink. We’re trying to teach him that the coke and milk on the table in our cups are “our” drinks, and that he has his own drink.

It sort of works. When he throws a fit, we know he’s almost done eating.

Jack has also started blowing on his food. Because we feed Jack the same food we eat, it’s usually hot when we all sit down to the table, so Christine and I typically blow on it before we put it in front of Jack. Just the other night, we were watching Jack eat, and we realized that he was holding his food in front of his mouth, and was “blowing” on it. He wasn’t very good at it, but nonetheless, he was blowing on his food. It was too cute. He’s done it a few times since we noticed it, so we know it’s not a fluke. Now we just have to teach him to blow on hot food, not cold food.

Jack has also started to learn to “be gentle”. It started with the kitty. When Jack used to pet the kitty, he’d pull his hair, but after saying “be gentle” and showing him how to pet the kitty, he understands “be gentle”. So, now that the Christmas Tree is up, we’ve told him to “be gentle” to the Christmas Tree, and he gets it. He doesn’t pull on the tree, but rather points to the lights and ornaments, and gently feels the leaves on the branches. We’ll have to get a real tree next year, so he knows what Christmas smells like.

Jack also walks now. He doesn’t walk a lot without help, but he can do it. He usually walks with one of his push toys (Josh and Elise gave him one for his birthday and we gave him one), and that gives him something to balance against (he’s pretty darned wobbly still) and that gives him confidence. It’s really funny to watch him step, squat, stand up, and step… which is what he does when he’s really not sure if he should be walking. If one of us is near him, he’ll reach out for help walking, but if he is standing by himself, about half the time he’ll take a few steps before starting to crawl.

Just the other night, we coaxed him into walking from his bedroom through the dining room and living room towards our bedroom with his red popper push toy in hand. When he got to the hallway, we realized he was doing this because he was chasing the kitty with the push toy. When he cornered the kitty in the hallway (all of the doors were shut in there) he laughed a hearty belly laugh, and as the kitty ran by him, he quickly turned and started following the kitty.

Jack likes to have his teeth brushed, but he doesn’t really get what we’re doing. We load the toothbrush up with water, and then put it near his mouth, and he sucks the water out of the toothbrush, while we attempt to brush his teeth. We then repeat this process a few times until we call it “good”.

Here’s a link to some photos I took tonight.