Zeke through the year

Zeke,

I thought I would write you a letter telling you how wonderful you have made the last year for your dad and me. You have greatly enriched our lives in ways we couldn't imagine. We never dreamed that this year would be so rewarding, but at the same time hard. We have been through lots this past year from learning to trust God with taking care of you, to teaching you that sleep is your friend, to letting you become the independent sweet boy that you are. Every moment hasn't been wonderful, but we would not trade a single one. We look forward to the next year and everything it will bring: more walking, more talking, learning to be a big brother, and who knows what else...

We love you so much and are so glad that God chose to bless us with you.

And now a glimpse through the past year...

Lil Sprout

In the hospital right after being born

August 2008- our baby announcement picture

September 2008, first real bath

October 2008, a trip to the ER

November 2008, Christmas pictures

December 2008, your first Christmas

January 2009, jumping

February 2009- found out Zeke was going to be a big brother!

February 2009

March 2009- LOVED walking in the walker

April 2009, Easter

May 2009, Matt and Tori's wedding

June 2009- lots of walking while holding hands and first trip to the beach

July 2009- crawling all over, pulling up, cruising

August 2009- Tarheel born and bred

Snuggly

Those of you who know Zeke, know he is not a cuddly kid. Although, recently he has gotten more snuggly near nap and bed times. We are thinking it is a ploy though for us to hold him and snuggle instead of putting him down longer. And yes, sometimes it works... The other night, I caught a rare moment of him snuggly with Spence with out any manipulation.

Curled up on the couch

Spence enjoyed the rare moment

It's not Mount Rushmore...

Zeke is an unstoppable force in our home now. He is climbing everything! I have told you about how he tries to scale his toys, but he is doing even more now. Here are just a couple pictures of how I caught him during the week and a video of him climbing the stairs. And yes, even after he climbs the stairs, he has to strike his model pose...

Privacy is now a luxury we do not get...

Aren't you supposed to play inside of that?

Trying to climb onto the couch

He loves watching the boys play basketball next door

Spaghetti & Corn

No, these were not in the same meal. Zeke is really enjoying eating big people food. He rarely gets baby food these days. As in maybe a jar or two a day. The rest of his meals are totally whatever we are eating. We are also in the process of changing over to cow's milk. So far things are going well with that. My goal is to have him completely on regular food and cow's milk by his birthday. We have already moved him off bottles. He hasn't had one in almost 2 weeks, and hasn't missed a beat.
We gave Zeke spaghetti and he didn't seem to know quite what to do with it. We are going to switch over to noodles that are easier for him to pick up for the next time we have pasta.

I was hoping for the classic spaghetti face, but this is all we got

He ate about half of what we gave him, and then ate more if I fed it to him off my fork

Caveman

We worried he would eat the actual corn cob, and he might would have if we let him

Big Boy

I can't believe I forgot to post that we moved Zeke's carseat around. I know you are supposed to wait until they are one, but we did it 2 weeks shy of his birthday. I like it because I can just look back or hand him back things. He seems to like looking out the window and looking up at us in the mirror.

Boys will be Boys

With all of our naptime issues recently, I was pretty worried about today's nap. I put Zeke down after we had lunch with Yaya, Uncle Bubba, and Auntie Belle. It was a little late for him, so I thought he would go right down. After an hour or crying/playing, but mostly playing, he quieted down. I went to check on him and this is what I found!

Up in the top right corner is his diaper...

Maybe he just prefers sleeping in the buff

Yes, I put his naked tooshie on my blog.

After I go up and see this I am faced with the dilemma of waking him up to put a diaper on him or just letting him be free. I decided with all of our issues I would rather just clean up any mess that he makes...

Happy Birthday to...

ME! Today is my birthday, but Spence gave me my gifts a couple days early. I got a cute little bitty laptop. I am in love with it! It is so tiny and light, but it runs faster and better than my big clunker that I had. I am currently typing this blog and took the picture below using my "netbook". Yes I have a webcam, yes if you are a friend out of the country this does put me one step closer to being able to figure out the whole skype thing :-)
So thank you to my sweet hubs for surprising me. I am completely blown away by the thoughtfulness of this gift.