Our boy is one. I can’t believe it’s been a year since we welcomed him into our lives and changed our world for the better forever. Can you believe he was ever this tiny?

We were talking the other night about how tiny and squishy and wonderful he was then, and how we are loving the stage he is now so much. It is so much fun to see him learning things and figuring out how the world works. Max says “Dada” but no “Mama” yet. The other day he started signing “milk,” it was like the light went on…I had just given him a sip of milk with dinner and he looked at me, did the sign, and then looked at his fingers as if to say,”Did I just do that?” We haven’t seen any other signs yet but he does do the motions to “Patty Cake” and yesterday he started attempting to do the spider motion for “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” That one will probably take some time to master. Maxwell loves to wave…bye-bye to us, at cars driving by, at people in the store…it is so cute!

We had a birthday party for Max last weekend. It was wonderful to celebrate with friends, and Jeff’s family was able to join us as well. We’ll do another celebration with my mom’s side of the family up north soon. Max enjoyed the cake, he didn’t eat a lot of it but did have some frosting. He tried really hard to push it over the edge of his high chair tray but couldn’t quite get it. My friend Justine (she of the fabulous J. Shelton Photography) took pictures of the party for us. There’s a sneak peek of a few here:

Max has his one-year checkup on Monday, so I will report stats after that. He is officially on one nap a day now…for several weeks he has been battling the afternoon nap and would be up in his crib for an hour, rolling around and talking, and not sleeping. So I finally gave in and moved the morning nap a bit later. He still gets tired pretty early in the evening, I am hoping that we can gradually move the one nap a bit later so it’s not such a long haul until bedtime. However, you won’t hear much complaining from me because he still sleeps 12 hours just about every night. I hope I haven’t jinxed myself by posting that publicly.

Justine also took one year photos of Max and some of us as a family. She did a great job as always. Here are a few:

Max had a great time with his Oma and Opa:

Remember last month I wrote about how hard it is to take the monthly Max and Chester pictures? Well, thank goodness he is a year old, because it is just about a lost cause now. There’s no way that Maxwell will ignore his good friend Chester sitting right next to him. Oh no, Chester must be hugged,chewed on, and tossed off the couch. Here’s the best one I could get. I know you can’t even see the number 12 sticker and it’s a bit out of focus, but I love his smile and his cute crossed legs:

And here’s a cute one that shows the 12 month sticker. He likes to tuck his hands under him like this when he’s sleeping too.

Happy Birthday, little bug. Daddy and I love you so very much!