For a long time I was concerned that Justin never made a move to hold his own cup. Now I’m frustrated cause he insists on holding it — occasionally to drink, but mostly just to bang it around. A couple nights ago he spent the entire evening meal mashing his food with his cup — didn’t eat a thing. Fortunately, experience has taught us that when he does refuse to eat at meal time, he’s just plain not hungry (at least he doesn’t fuss for food later on). Gotta bite that bullet, I guess…

Not to jinx it or anything, but Justin has slept in every day for the past week, and I love it. I’m starting to take it for granted, though, which is never good. He appears to have two new teeth coming in (six down, 14 to go) and that may be why he’s so tired. But I’m crossing my fingers that this is a long-term trend.

I had a really nice Mother’s Day this year. Chris gave me a gift card for the spa and a card that Justin actually made himself (Chris stripped him down to his diaper and let him mess around with crayons and finger paints…very cute). After Justin’s morning nap, we walked to the park and played for a bit, then stopped at McDonald’s on the way back to get some lunch. Then Chris and Greg took Justin to the pool so I could watch tennis in peace. What I actually did was nap for an hour, which was heavenly, and I woke up in time to catch the end of the match. This is the life.

Rumor has it there are kids out there who routinely sleep until 7 or even 8 a.m. Justin is not one of them, although there must be lots, cause virtually every organized activity for toddlers takes place between 9 and 11 a.m. Unfortunately, since Justin is and always has been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy (he goes to sleep at 8 p.m. every night without a fuss, but tends to get up at 6 a.m.), he goes down for a nap at 9:30 in the morning and we never get a chance to try any of those activities. I’m not anxious to push him to give up that nap, cause it certainly is a nice break, but someday it might be nice to have a chance to get out and try something new. C’est la vie.

Long weekends never seem quite long enough, but we did have a great time with the family. I played six rounds of golf in eight days and proved that practice does NOT make perfect. Still, it was fun. It was also the first time Dad, Rob, Dave and I have all golfed together — it’s so rare for the four of us to be in the same city during golf season that this was a special treat.

Justin found a new best buddy in Grandpa Kingwell (how to make friends with a one-year-old: do anything he wants). It might be a bit of a rude awakening for the little guy this week now that it’s just him and Mom again. Back to the ol’ routine…

There haven’t been any dramatic changes in Justin’s life recently, so there wasn’t really much to write about. His Kingwell grandparents are here for a visit and they’re enjoying their time with the little guy: playing in the park, exploring Planet Spacewalkers and just generally having a good time. Uncle Rob and Uncle Dave arrive tomorrow for the Easter weekend, so that should be good too.

There were a lot of changes in the days around Justin’s birthday: he gave up the bottle, switched from formula to milk, started walking and had his first haircut. After a few months of what seemed like little change, we suddenly realized our baby was growing up. I thought I would miss the baby days, but every new stage brings new and wonderful things, and I find myself enjoying watching Justin turn into a “real little boy,” as everyone puts it. It’s about this age that a lot of women start pining for a second baby (how many millions of siblings out there are only about two years apart?) but we’re definitely not there yet. I like our family just the way it is.

Justin is officially one year old today! Consequently, he saw his doctor for a checkup, and apparently he’s still a big boy: 31 inches tall and roughly 22.5 pounds, so he’s long and lean. The generally accepted rule is that a child reaches half his adult height by age two, so he still has a ways to go, but he’s already more than half his mom’s height. He’s grown 10 inches since birth — wow.

Apparently Justin woke up on Monday and decided he was going to walk. He took his first steps about a month ago but never really ventured very far until now — he can toddle around, change direction, even bend over and pick things up while still standing. We’re so proud!

I’m trying hard not to let my obsessively controlling personality get in the way of letting Justin do things for himself. This is a particular problem when it comes to meals — it’s tough for me to sit back and let Justin try to feed himself when I know I could feed him more quickly, more neatly and more efficiently. But I know he has to figure it out. And tonight we hit a milestone: the three of us ate as a family at supper time (usually we feed Justin about an hour before we eat) and the little guy managed to chow down almost all of his food sans parental help. A couple days ago we stopped giving him the bottle, too, so now he’s exclusively drinking from sippy cups (he never held the bottle himself and he’s reluctant to hold the cup, but that’s another story).

Our baby is becoming a toddler…