I am not sure how my baby is ALMOST A YEAR OLD, but somehow we’ve watch spring, summer and fall pass together and are back into winter. I was on a run the other day, and was thinking about how during my first postpartum run it was still cold outside, and here I was running again all bundled up. The years pass by so quickly before my eyes. It makes me sad, although 2020 was a year I was glad to see go. Similar to my journey sharing my first year postpartum with Hudson, I will most likely stop doing these updates once Charlie hits 1 year old, because things won’t change as quickly month to month after a year. I will still pop in and share some motherhood posts here and there, but I found that as Hudson grew older, and became more of his own person, I didn’t feel as comfortable sharing these little details. I am not sure why, but it feels different with babies VS toddlers / big kids.
BABY UPDATE: Charlie has grown by leaps and bounds this past month, maybe more than any other month! I feel like I always say that, but this time it’s true. He has 5 teeth – 2 on the bottom and 3 on top, and he cut the top three all together which was brutal for him. So sad seeing them in pain. He has just started to (sort of) crawl on his knees, and this past week he has discovered that he can reach things higher up / pull up. It’s been interesting to say the least. I can’t take my eyes off of him. He has a “path of destruction” as we like to call it, where he crawls super quickly through the kitchen, pulls all of the dish towels down from the stove, tries to open the cabinets, spills Claudes water, tries to yank the Ring sensor from the plug, and then ends in Hudsons room and wrecks whatever train set or blocks Hudson has going on. It’s sooo funny, he is SUCH A BRUTE. He is a determined little guy with the need for exploration and adventure, which is so different than how Hudson was. Whenever he hears that we’re feeding Claude, he crawls as quickly as he can over to her to try to bother her while she eats, and we have to literally pick him up as he screams and tries to get back down to her. It’s so funny. He babbles a lot, but it’s hard to tell if he understands word associations yet, but I kind of think he gets “dada” “baba” for bottle and maybeee mama. He claps and seems like he is starting to get the hang of waving. He loves Matt and Hudson the most, and will only give them kisses and not me, which makes me a little sad lol. Hudson was always such a mommy’s boy, and Charlie is just so distracted by wanting to touch and grab everything that he basically can care less about me until he’s hungry, upset by something, or gets startled. He loves to eat and is in the 97% for height and weight! He is now eating 3 full meals a day, and I’ve been slowly trying to teach him to drink from a cup. I’ve noticed in the past 2 weeks or so he drinks less from his bottle than he used to, and my goal is to get him down to 3 bottles a day by a year, similar to how Hudson was.
MAMA UPDATE:
I am starting to feel anxiety trickle back in this past month. I am not sure why, but this is the same age that I felt anxious postpartum with Hudson as well. It isn’t as bad as it was in 2017, but sometimes I just get so sad that I have literally 0 separation from Charlie. Don’t get me wrong, I am SO lucky to be able to work with him and spend his entire first year and more together, but some days I just miss the old me – the person who could take a few hours to do things just for me without any anxiety or worry about a tiny human – Hudson would be in school, and I could focus solely on work or the task at hand. The feeling of not being able to fully focus on any one thing ever makes me feel like I am failing and drowning in every single part of my life. I am not a 100% mom because I’ll be answering emails while I play and I am never 100% at work because i’ll be feeding Charlie mid photoshoot or rushing to get something done before he wakes up. I am not really sure of my course of action, but I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. Obviously Coronavirus complicates everything. Just some current thoughts and feelings, and if you’re going through the same, you are not alone.
Here’s some of my favorite toys that Charlie has been using this past month:
