Naps: Henry takes 2 naps, the first around 9:45am and the second around 1:45 or 2pm. He naps for 1 hour for each; you can seriously set a clock to him.

Feeding: I’m still breastfeeding Henry throughout the day. He gets milk 4 times throughout the day with 4 hours between feedings.

Clothing: 12-month with a few 12-18-month shirts

Bedtime: 7:15pm

Eating: Henry gets solids 3 times throughout the day. He eats breakfast and lunch with us everyday, and depending on our schedule, he will have dinner with us as well. It’s important to us that Henry be exposed to expected dining behavior, and see how utensils, plates, bowls, and glasses are used.

We have been giving Henry a lot more of our foods including salsa, Asian stir fry, peanut butter toast, and pineapple fried rice. We were surprised that the spice level of our food doesn’t seem to bother him. We’re still holding off on plain eggs (not baked into something as an ingredient), meat, and salty or crunchy things. There isn’t too much that Henry doesn’t like to eat, but he does get tired of being offered the same things. A current dislike of his is couscous, but we think it’s mostly a texture thing. Current favorites are berries and noodles.

Last month we mentioned that Henry didn’t like to have squishy foods on his hands so we got him some puffs to practice feeding himself. He loves his puffs; he squirms all over and grabs his belly (a sure sign that he likes something) when he sees his snack cup. His snack cup is one that has flaps in the lid to prevent spills. Henry started out by holding down one of the flaps and shaking his puffs out. Adam taught Henry how to reach into the cup to get at his snack.

Sleeping: Since Henry’s afternoon nap has been gradually been moving later in the day, we were able to push his bedtime back a little bit too.

I know we’ve said it many times before, but we are so thankful to have a kid who is such a good sleeper and is able to fall asleep on his own. We read him 3 bedtime stories and sing him 2 songs before we leave the room for him to fall asleep. Having this bedtime routine cemented certainly helped this month as we did a lot of traveling.

Development: We started Henry on a sippy cup awhile back. He quickly learned how to suck from it, but for the longest time he just let the water run out of his mouth. This month he figured out that water is something that is OK to swallow. We’re now working on sippy cups with straws.

Last month Henry was starting to show interest in pulling up and going from sitting to his hands and knees. His interest in this has grown, but he still doesn’t do it on his own. He will grab at us so that he can hold our fingers and be pulled up. Once he’s standing, he’s really proud of himself, and will practice balancing by letting go with one hand.

When Henry is sitting, he leans over to reach for things. He’s gotten pretty good at slowly scooting around as he reaches for something. More recently he’s learned to rotate his hip so that his foot points behind him when he’s sitting and reaching. He only does this with one foot though; we’ll have a crawler once he figures out that he needs to do it with the other foot as well.

Speaking of crawling, Henry has learned to push up onto his hands and knees when he is on his tummy. This is a new skill so it doesn’t always happen. More often, Henry doesn’t have enough traction when he tries pushing up and instead scoots backwards on the floor.

Likes and Dislikes: Even though Henry prefers to sleep on his side or stomach, he gets frustrated when he wakes up on his stomach. He is often too groggy to figure out how to roll over onto his back so he starts crying. He falls back to sleep almost instantly once we help him out.

This has been the case for awhile but Henry likes it when we blow little puffs of air in his face. He has a few toy balls that are able to be squeezed. He anticipates it and scrunches up his face, and then starts giggling and laughing.

The changing table has become Henry’s least favorite place. Diaper changes, dressing, and having lotion put on are all things Henry would rather not participate in. Usually we can distract him by doing a silly dance or song, or having him investigate a toy or book, but sometimes he starts whining as soon as he can see the changing table.

As mentioned above, Henry loves puffs. He’s had a few different flavors and doesn’t seem to show much of a preference. I think he mostly likes them because it’s something that he can do all by himself.

Henry likes rough-housing with us. He likes to be tossed up in the air, spun around, rolled back and forth, bounced, and tickled. Everyone gets nervous when they watch Adam mess around with Henry like this, but Henry honestly likes it. He also likes sitting on someone’s shoulders and rubbing his hands through their hair.

I recently showed Henry how to use a light switch. Now he gets really excited when I turn the light on when he wakes up from a nap, and reaches out to wall as we walk from room to room.

Henry loves books. This past month he got really into turning the pages of books. He’ll flip back and forth from one page to the next to compare the illustrations. There were a few days where all he wanted to do was flip pages in books. He would get incredibly frustrated when he reached the end of the book and wouldn’t have any more pages to turn. Books were also the thing that kept him most occupied during long car rides this month.

New This Month: At the beginning of this month, Henry started to show frustration when things got taken away from him, or we had to stop him from doing something he wanted. Generally he is easy to distract, but before this month he didn’t really care if he had to change activities or play with something different.

We took our first family road trip this month. Henry was a trooper through it all, even with some 4-hour or more stretches. We learned to leave right at the start of Henry’s nap and take a quick break every two hours or so to minimize his fussiness. Henry did a good job sleeping in different hotel rooms and a pack ‘n’ play while we were traveling as well.

Henry had his first Easter this month as well. The Easter Bunny came to his grandparents’ house and our house as well. He thought the baskets were the coolest thing the Easter Bunny brought.

Other Notes: We haven’t quite figured out what Henry means when he shakes his head from side to side. We thought it meant “no”, but more often than not he will do the thing that he seemed to be shaking his head for right afterwards. For instance, he has shaken his head as we are about to give him another bite of food. We check again, and the next time he accepts the same spoonful. Henry will also have spells where he does head shaking all the time for several days and then go a week with barely doing it at all.

We’re still working on baby sign with Henry. We’ve started to introduce some new signs beyond the first four. Henry still likes to use our hands to sign. We know he understands the signs we started with based on his reactions, especially with how excited he gets when we sign “milk” or when he wants to eat more of a food.

Henry’s milk protein intolerance is still present and seems to be just as strong as it always has been. I try my best to avoid food that might have dairy in it, but it’s very difficult to do when we are traveling and have to eat unfamiliar food. We find out if something had milk in it about a day later when Henry’s cheeks start getting rashy. If I know in advance that I accidentally had something with milk in it, we try to reduce Henry’s exposure as much as possible by feeding him frozen breast milk instead of breastfeeding. It takes a little over a day to clear my system.

Mama and Papa Update: Adam had to take two trips to Canada this month. It’s getting harder and harder for him to leave Amanda and Henry at home. Henry is excited to see Adam when he comes home, but we’re not sure if he actively misses his Papa while he is gone. We’re sure he detects that something is amiss, especially at bedtime. We’ve been extremely thankful that we are able to video chat at nights so that Adam and Henry can still see each other.

We love how much Henry’s personality is showing through. We couldn’t be prouder parents of him. His quirks and behaviors have rubbed off on us. We often find ourselves imitating him after he’s gone to bed, or narrating his thoughts as he tries to figure something out.