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.

Jack is getting bigger and bigger every day.

Over the past week or so, he’s started eating by picking up his plates and bowls, and trying to lick his food off the plate or drink the food out of the bowls…

It’s hilarious, but sort of annoying when he picks up the bowls and plates that are supposed to stick to the table that he’s eating off of. I sware, none of those stupid little suction cup based plates and bowls stick to the tables… none of them.

So if you’re a new parent looking for a suction cup plate or bowl, don’t bother… unless you want your kid to look like this after you give him a bowl of yogurt and then walk away for a minute or two:

See a few more random shots from last week here.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday morning, Jack took his first real steps by himself.

Christine and I have seen Jack take a step or two when we were by ourselves with him, but we decided that we wouldn’t say he “walked” until both of us saw him walking at the same time.

We decided that because, well, we didn’t want to be overzealous parents that thought we saw him walk when he was really just falling down, or trying to stand up quickly and had to take a step to get his balance.

So, on Tuesday morning, when I saw Jack taking a few steps, I hollared at Christine “get in here!” and she came running, just in time to see Jack take 4 or 5 more excited and super wobly steps. It was really cute. He was pushing the little duckie push toy we picked up for him for his birthday, and using that to balance.

Since then, Christine and I have tried to get some video of Jack walking, to no avail…

So here’s a little video of some of the footage we’ve taken while trying to capture some of Jack’s first steps on video for posterity:

Click to watch the movie

When I told my mom that Jack was walking her advice to Christine and I was to:

“Get your rest now it’s almost time to start the fun run… Hope you can keep up… I gave up around 3 or 4 yrs. old… I went to just keeping a eye on you guys… you two were too fast for me”

Heh…

One year ago today, Jack was born at 3:45 p.m.:

Today, I took some photos with a new camera that Marc Swendner is letting me borrow for the weekend:

Grandmother and Grandad showed up around 2:20, and Grandmother put me down for my afternoon nap. Grandad put together a present for me while Jack was napping.

When Jack got up, we got Jack dressed, so we could take some more photos. We went out into the backyard, and took some photos with the present Grandad made for Jack. A brand new hand-made picnic table:

We also took a photo of Jack in one of Daddy’s favorite t-shirts:

The idea behind taking a photo of Jack in that shirt is that we’ll hold onto it until Jack is 18, and we’ll take a photo of him in that t-shirt on every birthday, so we have a record of how big he’s getting relative to that t-shirt. Should be a fun tradition (as long as we don’t loose that shirt).

After taking photos in the backyard, we headed to Highland Mall to take some photos with Santa:

Jack enjoyed meeting Santa for the first time, and Santa was impressed with how good he was for only being one year old.

When we got home, Mary and Christine worked together to make a Havarti Chicken dish with green chiles, mushrooms, an italtian sauce, and havarti cheese. It was really good. We all sat down for dinner, and Jack ate… and then opened a few presents from his parents:

We finished up the evening with a fun bath with our new “Noah” bath toy:

Here’s all of the photos from today:

• Playing outside with Jack
• Picnic table and t-shirt photos
• Birthday dinner and playing afterwards photos
• Birthday bath photos

update: I wanted to point out that these photos were all taken with Marc Swendner’s Canon EOS-D60 [link to a good review], which is a high-end digital SLR. Marc was kind enough to let me borrow it for Thanksgiving, as well as 3 lenses, so I’ve been playing with a wide-angle lens, two telephoto lenses, the flash settings and other settings on the camera. I’m thouroughly impressed with the lift in quality from my Canon Powershot 410 to this SLR… I’m going to have to work on talking Christine into letting us buy this camera from Marc for Christmas 😉

This week, I’m taking a few days of vacation. It’s nice, but, because it’s Thanksgiving and we’re having Jack’s first birthday party on Saturday, we’re spending a bit of time cleaning up the house, getting organized, and cooking.

On Saturday, at 4:00, we’re having Jack’s birthday party. Here’s the invitation:

Christine ordered the invite from PaperMatinee, after we decided that we were going to do a Cowboy themed party. (Come on, what else do you do at Thanksgiving in Texas but yearn to play Cowboys and Indians?)

We printed 30 invitations, to save a little money, but we wanted to invite all of our friends to the party. The reality is that because it’s Thanksgiving weekend, a lot of our friends can’t make it (we went out with Josh and Elise on Sunday evening so they could wish Jack happy birthday before they head off for Oklahoma this weekend. They gave Jack a push toy that pops and sings while counting to 10, a little car that goes vroom-vroom, a Dr. Seuss Book, and an adorable little outfit – yes, I said adorable) … so, if you’re in Austin for the weekend, and would like to come celebrate Jack’s one-year old birthday, stop by (please call first, so we know we have enough food). I think the fare for the day will be chili, hotdogs, hamburgers, and anything else we can think of that’s “Cowboy friendly”.

No “official Red Ryder, air carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle” this birthday… we don’t want Jack to shoot his eye out:

Ralphie: No! No! I want an official Red Ryder, air carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle!
Santa Claus: You’ll shoot your eye out kid. Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Looking forward to seeing that movie again this Thanksgiving. I’m sure it’ll be on TNT non-stop.

This week, Jack graduated from his Baby Signs class that he was taking a Gymboree. Here’s a good photo of Jack and one of his classmates (Lucy) playing on one of the Gymboree playthings before class.

Jack is now officially licensed and trained to use sign language to talk to his parents and anyone else he meets on the streets…

What’s funny about Jack graduating is that I think he knows 3 or 4 signs out of the 30 or so they teach…

That’s how it starts folks… we teach our kids that it’s okay to get 90 percent of the test material wrong, and we still pass them, so they feel good about themselves… 😉

After class, we took Jack out to eat at the Central Market Cafe to celebrate his graduation. Jack has some Rustic Pizza, pineapple and strawberries, and some market veggies, before we went home and took a bath before bed. It was windy outside at dinner.

Actually, Jack has amazed us in the past two weeks or so, with his first actual grasp of a few of the signs.

Jack can now say “all-done” at the end of his meals, or at least when he’s done sitting in his high-chair and wants down. He did it tonight before either of us asked him if he was “all-done”.

Jack can also say “bath” (or at least he did tonight which was his first time to sign it).

Jack kind of says “bubbles” when he feels like it.

Jack has his own sign for “kitty” which is to say he doesn’t use the standard sign for it, rather he sticks his tongue out and “purrs” – which is hilarious and can be messy.

All Done

Cat

Jack also now points at individual objects and says “uh” which is sort of like him asking “what’s that?” We generally encourage this behavior, meaning Jack will probably never stop asking questions once he can really talk, by saying “That’s a _____” whenever he does it.

And then, Jack got his fourth tooth this week… so he’s got two on the bottom and two teeth on the top.

He also almost walked today… it wasn’t a real “I’m walking because I want to” walk, but rather, we stopped holding his hands for a split second and he fell into his Mommy’s arms… then proceeded to protest the fact that we just let go of him…

Fun times…