My boy is a year old!

Kawika had his first birthday on Wednesday.  No party yet; that happens tomorrow.  But still, the milestone has passed.  He is officially a YEAR old.  Chris and I were looking at him yesterday while he was napping in our bed, marveling about how BIG he is.  He was so teeny!  And now he's ginormous!  Proof:  His 1-year checkup was yesterday and he is a big guy.  He weighs 24 pounds and is 31 inches long (85th and 95th percentiles, respectively).  He wears 18-month sized clothes and even those pants hit just above his ankle now.  Good thing the weather is supposed to change soon; he has lots of shorts.  Hopefully he won't grow so quickly that they're all hot-pants when the really warm weather rolls in.

Aside from being a big dude, the doctor also said his iron levels are normal, he says a fair amount of words, seems very strong, and should immediately stop drinking from a bottle.  *sigh* I KNOW, Doctor Kevin, I know.  1 year = no more bottle.  In an ideal world.  But I have no intentions of cutting out the bottle until Monday.  When K will be an entire year AND 5 DAYS OLD.  And then we're phasing it out, starting with naps.  At least I have a plan in place, but I'm not enjoying it.  I don't think K will, either. 

The Birthday Party is tomorrow.  I've only done 1 test run of the cake and it didn't turn out exactly right so now I've got just 1 shot to get it right and I hope the adjustments I'm making are correct.  If not, I suppose I can turn it into a trifle, but that would be pretty disappointing.  Considering I did a test run and all.  I made Chris check to see how many eggs I needed because the recipe is at home with him and I am not.  The conversation went something like this:
"You need 5 egg yolks."
"Okay, how many egg whites do I need for the fluffy part?  Look on the second page."
"Umm... oh!  8 egg whites.  But we don't have 13 eggs!"
"It's okay, we only need 8."
"But... 5 yolks and 8 whites."
"Yes, but I'm separating the eggs.  So those 5 whites that I don't need for the 'yolk' part can-"
"OH YEAH YEAH I GET IT I KNEW THAT."

=)  Sweet, silly guy.

He also reported that Kawika has decided to take up to 5 steps at a time on his own, like, not holding on to anything.  I missed his first shuffling crawl, too.  Oh, and he cut a molar the other day when nobody was paying attention.  What is this 1-year-old crazy growing milestone bullshit?  What happened to my baaabbyy??

While discussing the fact that we need to wean him off of the bottle soon with my mother she said "Aw, but that's my favorite part, the snuggle up time we have when he's having a bottle!"  And I commiserated, because it's also my favorite part of each day: that last night-time bottle before he gets all sleepy and cuddles up on me and starts making cute little mouth noises while he falls asleep. 

And then I cheered her up because I said "Hey, no worries, you'll have another one in 6 months!"  Er, I will, but she totally gets to play with it.  I'll share.

 Here's my 16 week picture for those of you who are into that kind of thing. 

Looks like my 24-week photo last time. Boo.

It's a week old at this point, because I'm 17 weeks (tomorrow)!!  Sheesh!! What's going ON with TIME lately, huh?  It's just slipping, slipping... We find out the sex (definitively) a week from Monday.  I'm super duper excited for that, and I have a strong hunch and I can't wait to see if I'm right. 

Okay, enough for now.  I have things to do that don't involve talking about myself, and they're just as important, even if they're not as fun.  Until next time.