Austin – Month 12

Austin is now a whole year old. He’s not a little baby any more. He’s now a toddler. Cruising his way around the house, pointing at what he wants and starting to have the odd tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. Reading back the old posts I did when he was just a couple of months old, he’s come a really long way.

As he turns one, the rules on seeing family and friends have been relaxed a little and Austin was able to have a couple of small gatherings to celebrate his birthday and also the zoos opened in time for us to take him. He absolutely loved going to the zoo and seeing the animals.

Sleeping

Austin is continuing to sleep well overnight – going from 7pm to around 6am. He rarely makes a fuss going down as he’s usually really tired and ready to go to sleep.

He’s also getting really good at napping. Regularly having 1 hour plus naps, twice a day. The day after his birthday he actually had a three-hour nap. I think he was so tired from such a busy birthday weekend.

Morning nap – 9.30am – 10:45am
Lunchtime nap – 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Feeding

He’s definitely more comfortable with chunkier food and can bite quite well. We tried him on some baked beans and at first, he spat them out, not because he didn’t like the taste, but I think the beans were an unusual texture. Now he loves them and wolfs down the whole bowl.

I’m not pureeing much food for him, quite often I just chop it up a bit or mash it and leave a few lumps in for him to contend with.

I’ve cut his breakfast down a bit as he would sometimes be sick after eating. So he now has a smaller bowl of cereal or porridge (25g ish) and half a banana.

He’s also got the stage where he’s started throwing food. He was a really good eater until recently and now he’ll play with some of his food and then throw it on the floor. I hope he grows out of this stage quickly as it’s such a waste and often a pain to clear up!

We’ve also started to move him over to cows’ milk. We are currently doing a hybrid version as he didn’t like the cows’ milk replacing his formula at first.

Mental and Physical Development

Austin has quickly moved from commando crawling to hand and knees crawling. He’s also moved on from just sitting to being able to pull himself up to standing and cruising along the furniture. He’s quite a good climber too, I often have to rescue him from furniture he’s started to climb which I know he’s going to topple down from when he reaches the summit. This is definitely a stage where you have to have eyes in the back of your head!

Austin has cut another tooth this month, bringing him to 8 in total. All at the front. I know this, not because he will let me have a look, but because I have a perfect tooth mark in my gym mat!

He’s reached the stage where he’s not just interested in toppling things over, he likes to stack them up again. He’s got a mountain toy and he’s getting quite good at stacking the pieces back together. I also notice he’ll try and balance food on top of his sippy cup.

He understands ‘no’ but he’s just started at the stage where he is going to do that thing anyway. I have to look away sometimes as he has a very cheeky defiant face which (almost) makes me laugh when he’s up to mischief.

Our little man loves being out in the fresh air. We tend to go for a walk nearly every day and I’ve noticed on the days that we don’t go, he tends to be rattier. Toys get discarded quicker, he gets irritable if he doesn’t get his way and he’s generally less content. So unless it’s torrential rain, we tend to go out and take in the sights and sounds most days. I generally take him out in the morning and then my husband will also go out for a walk with him after he finishes work. He loves seeing the trees, dogs and birds. He’s always pointing at the things he likes on his trips out.

Generally speaking, he seems a bit more contented than he was a few months back. I was a bit worried about him seeing he extended family as he was very clingy to us before and I wondered whether lockdown would make it worse. Obviously, he hasn’t been held by anyone else, but he was cautiously edging closer to people, offering them toys, which is a stark contrast to where he was a few months back.