Well, we’ve spent the month chasing David around the house. I’ll bet I say “No David” 500 times a day. He is just into everything, as he should be at this age. His joy in life is finding some item from my desk, the bookcase, the kitchen cabinet, the changing table, etc. and carrying it around the house only to deposit it in another room, and go back for more. He’s throwing regular little back-arching screaming fits when we take things away from him now. Such a little stinker! Good thing kids at this age are so cute huh?

He gives the SWEETEST baby kisses and after a few pecks will lunge at my face, open-mouthed to plant a big wet one on me. He’s learned to shake his head “no” and the other day I got him out of the crib after a nap and said “can I have a kiss?” In answer he shook his head no! Seems rather unremarkable maybe, but it’s such a surprise when they first start communicating and can understand and respond to things. Rather appropriately, David’s second word, after learning to say “thank you” (which okay, is technically 2 words, but you know what I mean) is EAT! Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! He’s saying Drink too, I think, and we’re pretty sure he’s saying Daddy and Kitty. He loves his Daddy.

The best part about turning one is no more bottles! He’s made the switch to whole milk with no problem, and seems to really like it. The second best thing about turning one is getting to turn him around in the car. It’s got to be better than facing backwards, and he seems a little more content to ride than before.

Thank You from Randa Clay.

His new favorite book is the classic Everyone Poops . A new potty pooper himself, he is fascinated with all the animals and laughs hysterically as we read it. I love how the illustrations show all the animals with a strained look on their face as they do their business!

Jack is such a people person, I sometimes have hard time convincing him to go outside and play, because there’s no one to go out with him (I’m counting the days until David is more of a playmate for him). This Spring we’ve had a bird’s nest up in the alcove just outside our back door, and one day I had the bright idea to tell Jack that those birds sure were bored waiting for their Mommy to come back and feed them, and they would love it if a little boy would come out and talk to them and entertain him by playing in the sandbox. It worked like a charm! We named them Huey, Dewey, Louie and Mo and he would go out every day and talk to the them while he played in the sandbox. Alas, they have now flown away and I’m hoping Jack will take the opportunity to make up an invisible friend!

David learning to walk from Randa Clay.

It’s great to have a home that makes it easy for the boys to run in circles. We’ll probably have a worn out path through the dining room in another 10 years or so! Mark has been working on the horrid back yard grass weeds lately, so last week we pulled the swimming pool up on the patio in the shade to play in. Jack promptly took a running leap into the pool, feel slid out from under him, head hit the concrete… ow!

Jack playing from Randa Clay.

Not much growth this month, but lots of progress towards walking! David can take several steps and he thinks it’s really funny to launch out and crash down. His main problem with the walking thing is that he’s trying to run and doesn’t stop to try and balance himself!

David LOVES cars. He loves to run around the coffee table with his cars and flip them around on the tile floor since they make such a nice noise on the tile. He had learned to wave bye-bye, but I think he’s forgotten. In the below video, he looks at me like “huh?” as I try to get him to do it. You can see in the video that there are books all over the floor- that’s because he likes to pull them all off the shelves. I’ve stopped even stacking them in there nicely. I just pile them up again so he can enjoy pulling them off, one by one, examining and then discarding.

David 11 months from Randa Clay

Jack still talks and makes noise rather constantly and sometimes when he’s wound up, you would swear he is either demon possessed or just doing a really great impression of a rabid dog.  You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m telling you, we just watch him and wonder, “what has gotten into that child?”  He’s gradually losing his cute toddler mispronunciations, which makes me a little sad, but I still get to hear him ask if Daddy is in Uncle Homa (Mark goes to Oklahoma on business occasionally) and he still likes Pinch Fries with his chicken nuggets.

I know there are lots of people who think you ought to teach kids to say the “correct” words for things, but this month we felt justified that we had done the right thing in teaching Jack to say “hoo-ha” instead of uh… well, you know. We were sitting in church a couple of weeks ago, just as things started to quiet down for church to start, and suddenly Jack says, in a voice loud enough for 4 or 5 rows around us to hear, “My hoo-ha hurts!”

Not much new with David this month. He’s still a champion eater, and he loves to drink water out of a cup. I can’t get him to use a sippy cup yet, but he’s so good at drinking straight out of a cup we may just skip it. He isn’t much interested in bottles anymore unfortunately. It’s all I can do to get 10-12 ounces into him per day, and he won’t hardly let me hold him while he takes the bottle anymore. He wants to stand up, hanging onto my leg while he drinks.

We found a church closer to our new home, and they have a nursery, which has been a new experience for David. He’s right at the separation anxiety age, so it’s been difficult for him to get used to the Sunday morning routine. He hates to have his clothes changed, and fusses something terrible. I see some big tantrums in our future. If I change him anywhere but the changing table, his little naked self is off crawling away if I don’t pin him down- he’s the wiggliest little thing I have ever seen.

Our main frustration with David these days is all the screaming he does. It’s particularly bad in the car. He doesn’t like to be pinned down in the carseat and expresses his displeasure over and over with ear-piercing screams that make car rides of any length sort of miserable. We’ll be glad when this stage is over!

Lots of old picturesque equipment sitting around the ranch:

Mom shared her drink with the VERY pregnant donkey, and suddenly everyone wanted some:

This guy interrupted my singing at our little Sunday morning service. Sorry, that’s “Shall we gather at the river”, not “Shall we gobble at the river,” thank you very much.

We rode around in the back of the feeder truck while cousin Travis fed his many and varied groups of animals. Jack was impressed. David was sleepy.

Jack keeps himself busy these days playing the sandbox, playing games on the computer and taking toys away from David. David does not take too well to this, as you might imagine, and at least 50 times a day I have to “remind” Jack that he may not take toys away from David, and NEVER sinks in. Next opportunity he has he rushes over to take away whatever David has in his hands, not pausing for a second to think, “Maybe I shouldn’t do this.There might be consequences.”

We sold the trampoline that the prior owners of the house left and Jack was very disappointed to see it go. As the woman was loading it into her truck, Jack ran up and watched her for a minute and then turned away suddenly and put his hands over his eyes and wailed, “I can’t watch!”