Forest at 1 Year
I can’t even…a year? A YEAR? I’ve gone through 52 weeks of weekly photos, writing weekly and then monthly about this growing child of mine. If the first six months of his life felt eternally long, the last six months have breezed by me.
Here’s the final installment of Forest’s first year of life. While I won’t be documenting his life like this in this space after this post, I will be keeping things for myself behind the scenes. He’ll still make appearances here in other forms but I’ll be tailoring it differently.
- Food: The kid has finally figured out solid food! We’re still feeding him some jarred food but we’ve started offering a lot more finger foods that he can self feed. It’s messier but he enjoys it so much more. Once he started eating the chunkier jarred foods better I knew that we needed to work harder on finger foods. It took a few tries but he finally got it! Rice kind of started the whole thing. Chris and I went out for Mexican one day and I decided to give him some rice. He’d had a bit of rice at one point a month or so before that and had been interested but not super interested. Well, he went to town with the rice at the Mexican restaurant and has been loving finger foods ever since.
Some of his favorites right now aside from rice are eggs (boiled and scrambled), chicken, carrots, bananas, and ricotta cheese. He’s tried other things like green peas and bits of other fruits but he hasn’t taken to them as much as those items. I’m basically letting him try little bits of meals that we have so he gets used to the various tastes. He doesn’t always eat a ton but sometimes he chows down!
I’m just happy that food finally clicked for him!
- Nursing: We’re still going strong with nursing but he’s definitely going for longer periods of time between sessions during the weekend and also being diligent about making it known when he’s done. When he does want to nurse we do battle a short attention span and him being interested in the environment around him. I’ve decided to currently leave weaning open ended for this next year. I know as he eats more food that nursing sessions will taper off and from what I’ve read it might be just a few times during the day or eventually just at naptime or evening time before bed.
Since I have made it to a year of nursing I am going to slowly break up with my breastpump at work. I’ve been pumping four times a day since I returned to work last October and for the most part my pumping sessions have stayed steady in regards to production. I’ve decided to drop one of my afternoon sessions starting this week. That will leave me pumping twice at work instead of three times. As the months go by I hope to drop sessions as I can and maybe get off of pumping totally. From talking with a friend who dumped her pump after a year but continued nursing at other times, and from other stuff I’ve read, this is totally doable. I’m not in a rush to drop all of my pumping sessions because I wish to delay introducing cow’s milk as long as possible and Forest still drinks 2-3 bottles at daycare.
I think a few months ago I mentioned having a huge milk stash built up. I had privately donated almost 200 ounces to someone and as the months continued going I knew I needed to donate more. I ended up getting in contact with the Austin Milk Bank and went through their registration steps, which included blood work, to be approved to donate to their supply. I got together all of my oldest supply so that it wouldn’t go bad sitting in my freezer and donated another 210 ounces to them a few weeks ago. I will likely donate another 100 ounces in another month or six weeks. The goal is to keep a stash for Forest but not let it sit too long in my freezer. I have been so very blessed to have had a great supply to feed my child but to also share with other families who need it.
- Developmental: This change to toddlerhood has been very interesting. Every day a new light turns on in his brain and something different and awesome happens! He’s really soaking in everything. His attention span has gotten significantly longer in the last month. Where he would have gotten bored with something after 10 or 15 minutes he can now sit for up to 30 minutes playing or watching a cartoon. With the change to toddlerhood he’s also gotten much more active! We are in constant chasing mode.
New sounds come from his mouth constantly and he’s excelling at standing up. He’s not yet decided to take a step yet but we’re in no rush. Chasing a crawler around is hard enough, I can’t imagine chasing a walker. Well, I can—it’s going to be CRAZY!
He’s barely starting to wave but isn’t quite there yet. He will sometimes do what you ask, say if you ask him to clap, he gets that. It’s pretty fun to see him realizing things.
- Health: So far this month we did not have any major health issues, though we think he’s cutting another tooth. Getting in his mouth to see which tooth it is is now difficult because he knows how to bite and also likes to clamp his mouth shut before we stick our fingers in there! We started attempting to brush his teeth but we haven’t been successful yet. Our coworker gave us the idea of just having him hold the brush and watch us do it, so he can see what he should do. Definitely trying to do it ourselves is not going to work at the moment.
I’m a little sad this is over! It’s been fun to try to take his photos weekly, though it was increasingly difficult because he wouldn’t lay still. There were many laugh tactics behind the camera to get him to hold a pose long enough to take a few shots.
Onward to year 2, y’all!