Independence: Being One

Tyler never fails to entertain us. He's becoming more adventerous and has experimented with climbing. Andy says he needs some reality lessons with gravity and tells me to let him fall. One day while climbing around on the couch he fell backwards into his toy basket. I guess he decided it wasn't such a bad thing because he stayed and played for awhile before trying to get out.

Now that the weather's warming up he also loves to go outside. He still can't walk without his little cart so we bring that out for him to walk around on the sidewalk. He loves to watch the little boys on our block run around and play. He's observant and will sometimes take my keys and stand up and put them on the door knob when he wants to go out and play. Here's a picture of an attempted escape. We're just glad he can't reach the dead bolt yet.

1st Birthday

Tyler's first birthday was March 6th, 2008. (I'm a little slow on the updates). He got to wear this great hat and bib for every meal on his birthday. He had a little banner that went around his tray too but we had to take it off when he started pulling off the flags and eating them.

We had a quiet birthday at home with just Mom and Dad and then my parents on the web cam. Tyler loved smashing his cake and loved his new presents with lots of lights and sounds. We had a birthday party with Andy's family later in the month where he got some great outdoor toys for this summer and some bath toys.

I made his birthday cake. Writing out "Happy Birthday Tyler" was a little too complex for me with the icing pen. So we just stuck to the big number 1.
My mom bought Tyler this hat and sunglasses combo for his birthday. He loves the glasses. Anytime Andy and I are wearing our sunglasses in the car he wants to have his on too. I think he knows he's hot stuff with them on.

Big Steps

Thus far, Tyler has been somewhat resistant to walking and didn't like it if I tried to get him up on his feet to walk holding my hands. True to his character he'd rather do it on his terms and without Mom's help.
He goes to a play group on Tuesdays with other toddlers between ages 1 and 2. Tyler is one of only 2 babies out of the group of 10 that doesn't walk yet. (The other moms laugh at how Tyler can keep up to their speed doing his "turbo crawl").
Well today he discovered he could walk around while pushing his little cart his Aunt Heather gave him. He walked with the cart around the house for about 10 minutes. Yeah, those babies in the Tuesday morning group won't be laughing anymore. (Mom just better remember the cart).

Babysitting Bella

Bella is Tyler's 6 month old cousin. I watch her on Mondays and Tyler gets so excited to see his cousin and talk to her. She's about half his size but we're hoping she'll be able to hold her own with him soon. I'm including two videos we took last Saturday night while we were watching Bella. The first is of Tyler and Bella talking and laughing.

The second is what happened when I reached out my hand to keep Tyler from touching her face. Needless to say Tyler had not had enough sleep that day and was a little "sensitive."

Teething Tyler

This is a video we took shortly after Christmas. Tyler was getting his second tooth and we wanted to illustrate all of the "side effects" that come with it, including the crabby attitude.

10 Month Photo Shoot

Tyler is 10, almost 11 months old now. He says Mama, Dada, Dog (sounds like Dug), and Soft (sounds like Sa). We're working on getting him to not hit so I always tell him "Soft, Tyler" and then he says "Sa" quietly.

He's very busy all the time, crawling really fast around the house and trying to get into everything he can reach.

He gets very sad when Mom doesn't let him pull out all of her pots and pans to bang (Dad showed him that one). He's more prone to throwing fits but still has plenty of happy cute moments too. The other day he was supposed to be napping but I heard him up stairs in his crib talking to himself so I went to check on him and he'd thrown everything out of his crib and had even taken off his pants and thrown them over the edge too. He was quite pleased with himself!

Andy has a nice camera and takes great pictures of Tyler. We've never had them professionally done. Andy's are better. Tyler also knows how to ham it up for the camera I think. He's a natural.

Don't you just want to kiss that cheek?

Christmas '07

This was Tyler's 1st Christmas. We went to my parents in Maryland and everyone was spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa. Andy and I decided to start some Christmas traditions now that our little family is growing. My dad always read us "The Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve before we got into bed. So here's Andy continuing the tradition with Tyler.

Tyler got lots of presents but his favorite part was climbing over all of the wrapped presents and pulling off the bows. Once he had about 4 in his hands he took off and tried to make a run for it. They probably entertained him the most Christmas morning.