Jalen is 13 months old and walking!

For the last while, Jalen has been tentative about taking his first independent steps. Even though he could stand on his own and walk, most of the time he would still resort to crawling. But just in the last couple of days, Jalen has started to take more steps. It's so cute watching him stretching his arms around and stumbling across the living room. He usually has a big smile on his face because he's so proud of his new skill!

Jalen Gives Mommy a Scare

Last Friday night, Rick went out with his friends for his birthday so I stayed home with Jalen alone. I put him to bed but he stayed awake and was crying in his crib. When he cries at night, we usually leave him alone and try to check back on him once in a while. He cried and cried and next thing you know, I heard a loud *thud*. I ran to his room and saw him on the floor. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Jalen has a small stuffed toy in his crib so all I could guess was that he somehow stepped on his toy, climbed out of his crib and fell on the floor. He has never done anything close to that before so I was in shock. I could tell that he wasn't hurt but I was still almost in tears. It taught us an important lesson, don't put ANYTHING in the baby's crib and move the crib on its lowest setting. It was quite a scare!

Here's Jalen trying to escape his playpen.

Jalen's One Year Check up

We took Jalen to his one year check up on May 22. He is 23lbs 6 1/4 oz (50-75%) and 31" long (75-90%). Jalen is now drinking whole milk instead of formula. He's eating table food now instead of baby food. We are experimenting with what to feed him. In general, Jalen loves rice, tofu, crackers and cheese. We're having fun feeding him different things and seeing if he likes them. If he gets tired of something, he lets us know by spitting it back out. When he watches us eat, he gets really excited and wants to try what we're eating. He's also starting to grab for the spoon so sometimes we scoop the food for him and let him put it in his mouth. Jalen is still mostly crawling. He can take a few steps but he's not motivated to walk. We haven't taken many pictures lately but we'll post some new videos soon.

Here's Jalen at Katelyn's 1st birthday party on May 17th.

We took Jalen to his one year photo shoot on May 18th.

Jalen is Sick

Last Tuesday, Jalen started to get a fever around 102 degrees. We gave him some Tylenol because he was being fussy. The fever lasted through Wednesday then it broke on Thursday, his birthday. Then on Thursday night, his fever went back up to over 104. It was a rough night, he was really hot and woke up every hour. We brought him to the doctor's office on Friday and his fever went down again. We thought maybe it was some sort of an infection so poor Jalen had to endure some blood tests but those turned out to be negative. The doctor suspected it may something called roseola, where a child gets high fever for a couple of days then breaks out into a rash. Sure enough, the next day Jalen got a rash on his stomach and back. We were relieved because roseola is not serious.

Jalen is usually super active and always on the move. But when he was sick, all he wanted to do was cuddle up to you and fall asleep.

I actually enjoyed cuddling up to my little sick baby.

Jalen is one year old!

It's so hard to believe that our baby boy is one year old! The day that he was born is still so clear in my mind. Especially the four hours leading up to his arrival. So much has happened since then. The first month of his life was probably the longest month of my life, probably because I had to be awake for so much of it! Since then, he's turned from a newborn to chubby baby to toddler so quickly before our eyes. He's starting to learn how to walk and I can't wait for the next year.

Here's Jalen at his birthday dinner at Red Robin. He's getting a special treat: French fries!

Here's a sundae that's the size of Jalen's head!

Jalen didn't really know what to do with his sundae. We were expecting him to dig in but he was a little hesitant.

Jalen's Big Party

Last Saturday we had a big birthday party for Jalen. We invited all of Jalen's little friends. There were probably a dozen kids at the party under the age of one. I don't think Jalen realized that all of the fuss was all about him. He did enjoy having all of the kids around and eating his birthday cake.

Jalen and his pals (left to right): Katelyn (almost 1), Breanna (almost 3) and Matthew (9 months!).

Jalen's pals singing happy birthday to him (left to right): Matthew, Tyler (13 months), Alexa (9 months) and Henry (9 months).

Jalen grabs for the icing!

We let Jalen have at his cake but he actually wasn't very interested and just picked at the icing. I think by this time, he was too tired. He had a lot of excitement that day!

Jalen's New First

Jalen has been tentative about learning to stand or walk even though he is a really fast crawler. We are pretty sure that he's strong enough and has the balance to stand but he's just been reluctant to let go. More recently, we've been able to get him to take a couple of tentative first steps. We would bribe him with something he really wants, he's willing to walk a couple of steps then grab on to one of us. Check out this video.