Eleven

William is eleven months old and just weeks from his first birthday. It has been a great year and never ceases to amaze me how much a baby grows and changes in his first year. It's weird that I was still pregnant with William last year at this time; now it's hard to imagine a day without him.

He is definitely a boy on the move. He took his first step from me to Patrick on September 16. Since then he has been going from sitting to standing on his own and has taken lots more steps - five or six is his record. He loves this little hippo that he can walk behind. I walk behind him and turn it once he runs into something and can't go any further, then he keeps pushing it and the cycle goes on.
He loves the stairs and can climb up to the top of our staircase. Now that he can get up to the platform at the bottom of the stairs, there is always a barricade there (usually the ottoman). If I don't have something there, he immediately spots an opening and crawls as fast as he can to get there.
William now has 7 teeth. Number 7 came through on September 25th.

He loves my cell phone and now gets really upset if I'm talking on it and he's not. Today when I was talking he came speed crawling over to me and sat beside me and put his little palm up to his cheek, imitating me on the phone. Henry has a green toy cell phone that William likes to play with - he holds it behind his head when he "talks" on it. He likes to take turns on the phone and passes it to me and then waits for me to talk and pass it back to him.

He loves going into the bathroom. Since everything at his level is gross (i.e. the toilet) I always try to leave the door closed. If it's left open he makes a break for it (this boy doesn't miss a thing) and heads for his two favorite things: the toilet flusher (which he repeatedly flushes) and the toilet paper (which he unrolls, as seen above). He gets occasional, naturally occurring mohawks. These things are a force of nature and when he wakes up with one, there is nothing a brush or comb can do to tame them.



In the spirit of the election in this election season, I'll share William's latest nicknames - Johnny Mac and Maverick. Ok, so we don't really call him by those names, but we do have moments between us where we have to laugh because of the resemblance. Just look at the white (blond) hair, hair line and those chubby cheeks.