Ollie is eleven months old

One more month and my baby boy is a year! A year!!

Eric and I were talking last night and it seems like lately he's doing something new every single day. For example, he's now sitting himself up on his own. This allows him to get to his knees. Which in turn means he can pull himself up on anything. Last night every time he woke up he stood up and started screaming. It's an exciting new trend, and one that makes it less likely he'll just roll over and go back to sleep like we'd like. He can get up on his hands and knees, though he still army crawls the majority of the time to get places. Really, he prefers you help him and he walk. He's balanced on his own a bit, but he's not really sure about that yet.  

Ollie is also saying yes, this, that, dog, mama, and dada. He's signing milk, more, eat, and finished (which are basically the only signs we use, so hey). He can point to your nose when you ask him to.

He claps now, and it's the cutest thing ever. He claps for himself. He claps when I feed him milk. He claps when other people clap. He waves hello and bye bye.

We got him his first pair of grown-up shoes for our trips North. They have squeakers in them, so he loves to walk and hear the squeaking. It turns out he has very fat feet- wide and fat on top. The squeakers weren't intentionally, they were the only kind that would fit. It's exciting that something on him is fat.

Ollie loves to swipe credit cards through the machines at the grocery store. He loves watching the dogs wrestle. He loves playing in their elevated feeder as his own make shift water table. He loves singing and dancing. He loves giving kisses and hugs (still). He loves walking around the house with his push walking toy. He still loves hearing story book. He loves bouncing. He loves being flipped upside down and doing gymnastics with me. He loves watching trucks. He loves lying on the bed and having mama or dada bounce around him. He loves playing in the dirt.

Ollie is practicing feeding himself now. After I feed him for awhile he'll grab the spoon and practice feeding himself. Sometimes he gets it, other times he invents crazy techniques where he spoons the food out with one hand and then scoops it off with the other fist and shoves that fist into his mouth. I told him that doesn't really count, though it is effective.

It is amazing seeing him change so fast. It makes me happy for him and a little sad. It seems like this year has gone so quickly! How fast can the others go?

Luckily Ollie is not a baby that goes to sleep on his own, so at night he wants to be rocked to sleep when he wakes up. He snuggles up to you and hugs your neck and drifts off eventually. He looks so sweet and angelic and perfect in every way. My baby is the most beautiful wonderful baby and I love him so.