Eleven Months Old

Holy cow! Barrett is almost a year old. This past year has really just flown by. It is so hard for me to believe that he's been here almost a year already, but at the same time I can't imagine our life without him.


He is lots of fun and stubborn as can be. Lately he has a few favorite things (aside from pretending that he's not actually a baby but is closer to a four-year-old). He loves to be outside. This has been true for awhile, as he's always loved to go on walks and watch the kids play at the park. But now he loves to be outside, down on the ground, crawling around. He is all boy in that respect. He likes to crawl on the driveway, grass, deck, it doesn't matter. He just wants to be down moving on his own.

He also loves to play with toy cars. We have a ton of matchbox cars: cars from the movie Cars and Cars 2,  Nascars,and assorted Sesame Street character cars and cars from other random things. He has fun with all of them, but definitely has a few "favorites". If you've seen Cars 2, he's in love with Holly Shiftwell. We call her "his girlfriend". He also adores this set of five orange diggers that Harrison's friend Shane got for Harrison for his birthday. Barrett seems to think they belong to him and could spend hours pushing them across the floor.

And lately, he loves to eat. I think that some days he's in his high chair five times a day. He likes a lot of things, but has some interesting dislikes too.  He isn't really fond of cheese. Not a big fan of strawberries either. He doesn't like bananas.  It's interesting though, because he loves freeze dried strawberries and bananas so maybe it's a texture thing...

As you can see, he has four teeth. His bottom two came in a couple of months before his top two did. Those top two teeth were so swollen for months, and finally at about ten-and-a-half months one broke through and then the other one followed. He seems relived to be done with that and we can't see or feel any other teeth poking through at the moment. I am concerned that we might have a biter on our hands, because he seriously will bite anything. He loves to crawl onto Harrison and will try to bite his back, head, basically whatever he can grab onto and get in his mouth. He always tries to bite Mark's nose. And, if he's crawling around under the kitchen table and pulls up on our legs, we know he's going to try to bite those too. Hopefully this will stop as soon as a few more teeth come in because it is not fun to constantly be on alert while playing with him!

He is a very social baby, and loves to wave and say "hi". He gets really excited if people say it back to him, like at the grocery store, Target, Costco...our usual errand spots. He seems to enjoy riding in the cart and waving at people so they wave back. Whenever Mark gets home from work, Barrett always waves and says "hi". And, he's started to say mama mama mama along with his dada dada babbles, although it's not as if he's looking at me calling me "mama" just yet. He does babble quite a bit, and it's seriously like a full sentence, with punctuation, etc. It's very cute to listen to.

He pulls up on anything and everything, and cruises around furniture, but doesn't seem too interested in walking just yet. He's a super-fast crawler, and LOVES to go up the steps. We are working on getting back down the steps safely, and he will try a couple of stairs that way (backing down) but then seems to get impatient, turns around and dives down. So, I always have to be right behind him when we are doing the stairs. Some days it seems like he could play on them for hours. Exhausting!

Just this week he has started sobbing when I leave the room. It's pretty sad, because he will just sit there on the floor and cry. Hard. Big tears roll down his face. Even if I just run from the living room into my room to put something away, he sobs. He used to follow me more, but just this week he's started doing this instead. I guess it's good to be loved, but really, I come right back every time!!

Aside from that he's a pretty happy, albeit stubborn, little guy. Harrison wants to know when Barrett will talk, so I think he's getting more and more excited about having a built-in playmate. All of these photos are from the day he turned 11 months old.


This is his preferred way of sitting. He really dislikes just sitting with his legs out in front of him, but will play like this forever.



He loves to play at the kitchen windowsill.

Happy Boy!