Baby Kelch: What a difference a year makes....

I have just about decided I am the worst blogger in history. When reviewing all my previous blogs, in almost every one of them I promise to blog more often. Yet, here I am almost a year since my last post. A good friend of mine has a blog that she updates weekly, and I am so envious of her online documentary of what's going on with her family and watching her kids grow in pictures on the blog. So here I am once again, vowing to at least try and be more diligent about my blogging frequency.

Gage is now 14.5 months old, and needless to say has changed quite a bit from my last post. He is the hi-litle of our lives and an absolutel angel. We celebrated his 1st birthday with family and friends on Feb 11th. The theme was a snakes, and snails, and puppy dog tails theme. My Aunt Betty and Uncle George made 2 birthday cakes for Gage to celebrate. This in itself was worthy of celebrating. My Aunt and Uncle have made all of our cakes through the years, and I was more than pleased to have them carry on the tradition with my little guy. Gage wasnt quite walking as of his first birthday but he started shortly thereafter. Around 13 months he was walking 80% of the time, and only crawling when he needed to get somewhere fast.

He loves to walk now. And he LOVES to play outside. He's 27.5 pounds now and a heavy little sack of potatoes. His favorite foods are: FOOD. This boy can eat! He's a bottomless pit that we'll never be able to afford come the teenage years : ) Ha. In all seriousness, his favorite foods are strawberries without hesitation. He LOVES strawberries, toast with strawberry jelly, bananas, macaroni and cheese, little smokies sausages for breakfast, mandarin oranges, graham crackers, and yogurt melts. He is a good eater, not picky for the most part and doesnt seem to have his Daddy's distaste for veggies. He's off the bottle and onto whole milk, no more formula. He's been extremely easy to transition in almost every aspect. We havent had to really fight him on anything.

He is learning to blow kisses now and will wave "by-bye" when you leave the room. His first word was "Da-Da" but he is doing really well with expanding his vocabulary now. He can say these words: "Bye-bye, Momma, Boo, Ball, and if you ask him what does the puppy say...or if he sees a dog in the neighborhood he starts saying "woof woof" over and over. Its really cute. I am trying to get him to give kisses and he is getting better about it. Most of the time they are open mouth, bite your nose and slobber on your face kisses, but hey I'll take them.

This past Monday, Gage spent his first night away from home without us. Last September before I started this new job with Hines, Dustin and I took a quick overnight getaway to New Braunfels and my mom came to stay at our house with him. This past Monday, Jolene came into town and wanted to take Gage to spend the night with her in Lake Jackson. Dustin and I were really apprehensive, but wanted to encourage the relationship between the two of them so we relunctantly agreed and tried to focus on the bright side...no baby, meant date night for us. I really struggled with him being gone. It wasnt so much the time away from him, I was worried about him being in a new envinronment without me. He didnt have any constants or sense of familiarity so I was nervous. Gage did great and so did we. We missed him like crazy but it was indeed nice to have a night to ourselves and be able to go out to eat without worrying about someone throwing food, cups, etc across the table.

Without further ado, let me bring you up to speed in pictures....