Alexander Tirrell – A Year In Review
September 20, 2007Our first year together started at 6:39 pm on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006. It was an exhausting meeting for all parties involved – mostly because it took us 36 hours to get there! But the first meeting was wonderful, and the newest addition to our family was absolutely adorable.
The first 3 months had some ups and downs – it took us a while to get a good sleeping schedule figured out (about 6 months…) and a while to get a good feeding schedule figured out (about 4 months, and then a month later, Xander weaned himself…) But all-in-all, we were quite pleased and surprised at how lucky we had gotten with our son. He didn’t cry excessively, he loved to stand, he hated tummy time, but he loved to cuddle. He had crazy, unmanageable hair, and the cutest face we’d ever seen.
At 4 months Xander started day care. They whipped him into shape in a hurry. In no time, he had a great schedule, slept well during the day, and was easier to predict when he would eat both day and night. His hair was still a little crazy, but we were starting to figure it out. The holidays were fast approaching, and we spent lots of quality time with family for a few weeks. Xander still hated tummy time, but he started to sit up on his own. Almost immediately after figuring out how to sit up, he started to bounce – especially when he heard music – this is still one of my favorite Xander quirks. About this time Xander really started to develop his personality. He began to drool like crazy, and teeth started to poke through shortly after. Toys became fun, and he slowly started to entertain himself. Bath time in the sink without the baby tub was also fun (until he started splashing everything and every one in a 5 foot radius…). We left him with family for the first significant amount of time at the end of his 5th month. A week away – he did well, but boy were we happy to be reunited!
Months 6-9 brought all kinds of exciting developmental milestones. Xander finally figured out how to roll over, and in what seemed like no time at all, he was crawling! Mobility made a huge difference for the little guy, and he began to enjoy having some control over where he was going. Food was also an adventure. Rice cereal was never a big hit in our house, but with a little trial and error we found plenty of exciting foods that Xander would eat.
9-12 months has been a perfection of some old skills, and addition of a few new ones. Now that Xander is getting better with textured food we’ve begun a game – what won’t Xander eat? So far, we haven’t found anything (that is in the approved list of baby foods of course) that he won’t eat – we’ve tried lemons, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, pasta, garlic flavored pasta, rice, hamburg, oranges, bananas, apples, and lots of other foods that I can’t think of at the moment. So far, he’ll eat anything! As Xander got faster and more experienced with crawling, he soon discovered that stairs are lots of fun 
If you’ve read my blog much, then you might have heard that last month Xander started walking – very exciting. Now we are shifting from having a baby to having a toddler. Xander is bathing in the bath tub now. He’s eating adult food and drinking milk instead of formula. We’re still adjusting to having a little boy in the house instead of a baby, but we’re learning and loving it! It’s been a heck of a year, quite an education, and I consider myself incredibly lucky that everything has gone so smoothly!
