One Year

Guest post by Mom:

It happened. It really happened. Sam turned one. I am still so happy we were able to get to Disney for his birthday. We have managed to celebrate every baby turning one by letting me go to my happy place. It really helped me that October was crazy busy. I didn't have a lot of time to sit and mourn the "end" of babies for me.

Sam at one:

He's wild. But not really. He loves to cuddle, but he kind of just walks around the house opening drawers and pulling all the things out. He likes to climb up on something just to sit on it. He's just got the two teeth still, but he's been working REALLY REALLY hard on getting his two top teeth.

Unfortunately, he spent the next two weeks after his one year birthday sick, sick, sick. Eyes goobered shut, boogers constantly out of his nose, constantly crying. CONSTANTLY. He was REALLY hard for about two weeks. He started nursing more instead of less and I can't quite let it go. He seems to have lost the ability to self soothe which again has been HARD.

He laughs at Iva and almost only Iva. He will go to the gym daycare like it's no big deal, but at the same time dreads it and clings to me when we walk in the doors. He eats food and lots of it...for other people. I can't seem to get him to eat! Although, he likes scrambled eggs, graham crackers, string cheese and goldfish crackers.

He pulls faces and refuses almost everything you offer him even if he's tried it before, but you should always offer it to him again quickly because he will take it. He just snubs it first.

He's still not much of a talker, but we get definite Mommas now and we have been working on signing with him. He's started doing "all done" and has a little noise he makes with it. He will also wave his hand in an attempt to do "please" with a little "pee" at the same time. His first "word" is probably "ups" as in "oops". He likes to drop stuff and say it. Sometimes he tries to sign "more", but it's not very regular. He prefers to communicate in grunts and yells while fighting with Iva over toys. He will scream until he gets what he wants.

He thinks the dogs are funny and likes to get in their house. He's pretty gentle with them too.

He's a steady walker. He tries to run and walk backwards and turn circles. He never crawls anymore. Balls are his toy. If you need to distract him, grab a ball.

At his one year appointment he weighed 20 lbs 8 oz and was only in the 4% for height, but I can't remember how long that was. His weight was in the 34%. He's small. But that's really not a surprise to us. A week after the appointment (where he had no appetite because of his illness), he still weighed the same, but we found out he had a DOUBLE ear infection. Mom felt terrible, but antibiotics were amazing and we got a new kid after two days.

We love him. He's such a joy. Look at all these photos.

Sick photo!

His actual birthday, Grandma's ward had a Halloween carnival. He seemed to love the cupcake there that he fought Iva for. 

But once we got him home, we almost had to shove the cupcake in his mouth to get him to eat it!

The Big Surprise

So just before Sam's birthday, we earned our trip to California. We weren't sure what we would do there, but we knew we would visit Grandma and Grandpa and Chloe and maybe go to the beach. We arrived in California at 2:30 in the morning and Mom and Dad surprised us with a hotel.

We were a little suspicious though because it looked like we were right next to Disneyland. I was sad and jealous. WE wanted to do Disney, but it's so expensive.

Mom and Dad did their best to get us to sleep once we were in our hotel room, but our neighbors were LOUD and had also just arrived, but they were teenagers who were thriving on NOT sleeping. But sleep we did and it felt like we had just barely closed our eyes when Mom shook me awake.

"Do you think we should go to California Adventure today and ride Tower of Terror for the last time?"

WHAT!??!?!?! Yes!! I mean, I was sleepy when I answered so it was little bit muffled and calm, but I was so excited! Tower of Terror is closing and being changed to a Guardians of the Galaxy ride and we wanted to say good bye to it. Mom and Dad pulled off the ultimate surprise letting us go to California Adventure for just one day and playing our hearts out.

We had barely slept, but it's a Saturday and we knew the park would be busy so we made sure we were leaving our hotel and walking over about 90 minutes before the park opened. The sun was barely up because it was like 6:30 in the morning!

On our walk over we got a big peek at the construction of Star Wars Land. There still wasn't much we could see, but it was so exciting!!!

We were the first ones at the gate and we sat there with anticipation for 20 minutes or so before they even let us in to the park.

Mom attempted to get a photo of Sam with Walt to start his one year old birthday celebration, but Sam was more interested in walking.

Here is the shot with his birthday button!

We have got Disney down to a science! Mom and Dad divide and conquer in the beginning. Mom took the littles and got us fast passes for Racers and then took them on Toy Story (because Ariel was closed temporarily!!) while us bigs got to ride Goofy's Sky School three times in a row without getting off!

Bugs Land all together!

Traditional thumbs up photo on Lady Bug Boogie!

We finally got to try out the new ride in CarsLand....Luigi's Car hop or something? The cars do a dance. It was cute and Mom and Sam talked to the ride operator forever and learned silly hand signs for the dances.

On our last trip to Disney, mom, Cara and I had to walk off Racers because it broke and we didn't get our last ride. So we hopped right on and made it through the line in RECORD time. It was crazy. We moved so fast!

Iva ATE up meeting all the characters. She was in heaven.

We also had a dream come true in that we got to meet JUDY!!!

Sam is sleeping in the stroller!

This little spider right here tried to hitch a ride on Iva. He was beautiful!

Mom always says she feels so lucky because all her kids are Disney champs. Our family can really work some magic in a park. Sam got fussy and hard to hold a few times since he's kind of a spaz, but Iva has no problem waiting in lines. While Cara and I took Dad to ride our first ride on Tower of Terror, Mom spent time with the two little ones watching the Disney Jr live show and meeting more characters.

Sam loved the Golden Zephyr. He kept leaning over the side (slightly scaring Mom) just to watch everything go by!

Our little Woody meeting Jessie. We didn't get to meet big Woody though! Darn!

Mickey's Fun Wheel. Another line that was supposed to take forever, but instead FLEW by. We just love it.

Siena rode California Screamin' FIVE times. She loves it. So do Mom and Dad.

Mom's turn for Tower of Terror!!!

Our final ride together on Tower! Dad got on it again one more time with us....

Iva could NOT keep her eyes open at dinner. She tried and FAILED. It was sweet.

As a bonus, we got to ride the new Soarin' Over The World. SO COOL. Although Mom says she prefers the original Soarin'. This one was a little more computer generated for her taste, but it was still incredible and so were the smells.

We run our babies ragged. Sam slept through this ride twice during the trip!

My family is CRAZY

Iva was the only lucky one to meet Mickey!

Saying our good byes to the Tower!

So for our final ride on Tower, we went back late at night. During HalloweenTime, they were offering a special late night checkout that had the ride entirely in the dark. We were NOT interested in doing that, but as fate would have it all but one elevator broke and so you had no choice. The line for the ride was RIDICULOUSLY long. Even the fast pass line. So Dad got us on and we survived, but it was so cool to have no noise. Mom opted to not do it because the wait was so long which was a bummer, but we felt like we got our good bye!

ANNA AND ELSA!!!!

It was an INCREDIBLE day. We managed to do every ride with the exception of two...Grizzly Rapids and Jumpin Jellyfish...oh and Tuck and Roll bumper cars, but we chose not to do them. We even got multiple rides on most things. We felt so lucky. The day wasn't nearly as crowded as we were afraid it would be and we were all happy and healthy. Such a great surprise.

The trip wasn't over too. We went and stayed with Grandma and Grandpa and got some beach time in. The weather got all overcast and it sprinkled a bit so no one actually got in the water, but it was still neat! We tried out this new park that wasn't very far from the house and it was like you were in an airport. We will definitely be going back!

We paid a little bit for the trip on our way home when we encountered traffic that came to a dead stop. Like get out of your car and walk around dead stop. We were maybe a mile back from where it stopped and we never really did figure out completely what happened, but we think the highway patrol stopped us farther back than where an accident had occurred. We were about half way home and so it was a little frustrating, but luckily we were only stopped for maybe 20 minutes.