We celebreated Silas’ first birthday with family and friends a few days before his actual birthday where everyone had the day off due to the second day of Pentecost holiday! Silas’ guests arrived at 11 and shortly after we ate brunch. We had been preparing and freezing different dishes throughout the week, so we ended up with a feast. We had: 2 quiches, sausages, eggs, fruit, rolls with cheese and jam, hashbrowns, a make your own pancake station, applesauce muffins and diverse drinks. The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot, not too cold and sunshine. We all sat outside on the patio and ate and ate. Silas really liked the pancakes and ate lots of different dishes. Then it was time for his nap.
Brunch outside
When he woke up it was time to open presents. Everyone gathered around as Silas tried to open the presents. Luckily the other kids at the party were very helpful and we got them all open. He got lots of great presents and no doubles!
His Birthday Presents
Finally it was birthday cake time and we sang Happy Birthday in English for him. I had made 2 banana and chocolate layer cakes for him because he loves bananas so much, and some chocolate chip cookies. Suprisingly Silas didn’t eat very much of the sweets, but he ate enough to get a little messy!
The rest of the afternoon was spent playing outside. We had Konge-spil, Bocce, Croquet, and some balls to toss around. Silas enjoyed playing with some of his new outdoor toys.
Before we knew it, it was time to start up the grill and eat dinner. We had hamburgers and hotdogs with chips and watermelon. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. All the guests left shortly after dinner and Silas was pretty much falling asleep on my shoulder while saying goodbye. We could tell Silas enjoyed the day and we had a lot of fun celebrating our little boy turning one!
Sleepy birthday boy
On his actual birthday, both Søren and I had the day off, so in the morning when we heard he was awake, we went into his room with a Danish and an American flag and sang him a birthday song. He looked at us like we were a little strange, but that’s what I loved bout it. After breakfast we gave him his present from us, a play kitchen. Silas helped assemble it and had a lot of fun playing with the small plates and forks and putting things into the over. We took a trip to the library in the morning, where he could explore and play with the toys. We ate leftover cake and muffins and sang Happy Birthday to Silas for his afternoon snack. It was a precious day full of reminiscing about what we were doing exactly one year prior. We feel so blessed to have been able to spend the whole day as a family and blessed to have Silas in our lives. Happy Birthday Silas darling!
Our darling baby boy is now 1 year old! The year went fast but at the same time looking back over the past 12 months and seeing all changes that have happened with Silas, it seems like it could have been 10 years. 1 year ago I lay in the hospital with a tiny baby on my chest, a baby who relied on his mother and father to give him everything. 1 year later that tiny baby will not even lay on my chest for more than 2 seconds, as his curiousity and independence takes him away to explore something nearby.
Silas is on the move, and knows what he wants. He can feed himself and eats whatever we eat. He can get from one activity to the next without needing us to carry him. In one year he went from completely helpless, to an active and independent little boy. He has brought so much joy to us this past year and we look forward to many more birthdays to come.
Traits at 12 months:
1) Walk hesitantly while holding on with only one hand. You can tell he gets tired more quickly as he is really working on his balance, but he gets better everyday.
2) Walk around tables and furniture. He cruises from one end of the room to the other, holding on to the wall or anything else he can find.
3) Wave on command. When we ask him to wave in either English or Danish he immediately does it without us having to show him.
4) Clap – he hasn’t quite mastered clapping on command, but when the mood moves him he claps and smiles proudly.
5) Make animal noises. More correctly he can make ONE animal noise….When you ask him what does the snake say?…sssss…is what you will hear. I will give Søren the credit for the snake being the first animal noise he can make.
6) Make elephant noises. There is a picture of an elephant on the front of his animal picture book, when ever he sees the book he starts squealing like an elephant.
7) Knows what he wants! Silas has definitely developed a will this past month. If something catches his eye, he will whine and point until we figure it out. Then if it is something that he cannot have, he throws a little tantrum.
8) Understand NO, and then do it anyway. He is not allowed to touch the TV, and he knows it, but he crawls over to the TV anyway, the whole time stopping up to make sure we are watching. Then he crawls up on to the TV table, smiles looking us straight in the eyes and then gives it a whack. Then he laughs when we calmly take him away.
9) Climb over everything including: The bean bag chair, us, the couch, his swing, every type of toy (preferebly the big ones) and even tries to climb off of the bed or couch onto the floor.
10) Clean up after himself. Silas likes putting things back in the bins. Sometimes after making a big mess he will start putting things back before we even ask him, but if we do ask him and hand him some pieces he will have things cleaned up in no time.
11) Give high-five! This is said the exact same way in both English and Danish (the Danes actually use the English phrase) so he get a lot of practice with this one.
12) Understands a lot of commands. As above, waving, clapping, snake sounds, high-five, putting things away, but also things like “turn it over” when he is trying to put a block through a hole, or “come here” if we are leaving to go to a different room. In all these commands it is very clear that he understands both languages.
13) Say Hi/hej! Its official, we believe Silas’ first word is HI/HEJ. He says it every time after we say it to him and many times when we wave. Again this word is pronounces the same in both languages, so maybe that’s why it is his first.
14) Answer questions. His answers aren’t always consistent, but he can hear the inflection in our voices when we ask him a question, and he usually answers with an “eh”, “ej”, “ah”, response.
15) Been to the dentist! He has 8 perfect teeth and some of the big molars on their way.
16) Can eat with a fork, as long as we put the food on it for him. He tries to stick the food with his fork, but has not quite mastered that yet.
17) Weighs 10.9 kg (24 pounds) and is 77 cm tall (30 inches)
Happy in the sandbox
If it doesn't taste very good, why do I keep eating it?
A few weekends ago we went to the zoo nearby. We went as a group of young families from church and there were over 20 of us. We had beautiful weather and had a picnic lunch and some cake for coffee before going home. We think Silas had a fun day, but he was more interested in getting out of his stroller to play with the rocks or in the sandbox than in the actual animals. Nonetheless it was a fun family outing with friends.
Silas has learned to wave and uses any opportunity to do so. When ever we start putting his jacket on he starts waving. He waves goodbye to the house when we are leaving and of course when we drop him off at daycare. Usually we wave to him first and then he will wave back, but the other day I wanted to try an experiment. So I said to him in English “Silas, can you wave?” without waving myself and then he waved back! He understood me! Then I had Søren ask him in Danish “Silas, kan du vinke?” and he waved too! It was amazing to see that he definitely understood us, in each our languages!
Silas is as always very curious, but now he can do something about it! He can open just about any cabinet or drawer and proceed to immediately remove the contents.
In general he likes to make messed and "destroy" things. For ex: If I to build a tower with blocks, he knocks it down as soon as the first block is standing. Or he takes all the books off the shelf and then when I start putting them back, he quickly crawls over and knocks them all down again. I love to watch him be so adventurous and curious!
Although Silas may not have learned a lot of new things this month he definitely has developed his movements. Not only can he crawl, but he can CRAWL! He zooms around from one end of the room to the next. He thinks it is super fun if you try to chase him and he scurrries away. Sometimes he even tries to chase us. But I have to say it again, Silas is such a happy baby. He is constantly smiling and he just gets so excited about everything. If Søren and I begin laughing at something, he starts laughing and before we know it all three of us are laughing at each other. It is so precious. He babbles constantly, and although we haven’t made out any clear words yet, I am sure that he thinks he is saying words. Finally our boy is still a great eater, he eats 1½ pieces of “rugbrød” for lunch and eats everything and more of what we prepare for him at dinner time. He doesn’t really seem to have a stop button when it comes to food. I guess being so active makes him hungry.
Silas’ rythym is hard to figure out. At the beginning of the month he was getting up between 7 and 7:30 am. He would lie awake in his bed chatting for awhile, and then we would bring him into bed with us to just hang out and relax before all three of us got up. Now this past week and a half he has been waking up as early as 5:45am, but usually between 6 and 6:30. We let him talk to himself and then usually one of us gets up and eats breakfast with him. On the days he has gotten up early he usually takes a 20 minute nap in the morning, but many days he has gone without his morning nap. His afternoon nap can last up to 3 hours, or like the past few days only 1-2 hours. The days he takes a longer nap then he has not needed his later afternoon nap at all. So some days he was only taking 1 nap! It’s nice having so much time with him and not having to plan things around his multiple nap times.
Traits at 11 months:
1) Silas now wears size 80cm clothes and has mostly outgrown size 12 months.
2) Has 7, almost 8 teeth. 4 on top, 4 on the bottom.
3) Had his first real sickness. He had a fever around 40 degrees Celsius for 3 days in a row. Usually the fever started after lunch sometime and lasted until bedtime. He just wanted to cuddle and didn’t have much energy for anything. But he would have spurts of energy where he could smile here and there. He was also a bit cranky these days, but overall handled it very well. It was hard for Mommy to hear him moaning though.
4) Eats all meals “alone.” (except his oatmeal breakfast) We still only put a few pieces of food on his plate at a time, but he picks up all different types of food items and happily puts them in his mouth. We can tell that he enjoys mealtimes much more when he can decide the tempo.
5) Eats the same food as us! No more making special food for Silas, he can eat pretty much anything that we are having for dinner.
6) Can get down from a standing position. He started out being quite cautious, but now he easily reaches down and when his hand reaches the floor he gets down into crawling position.
7) Gets mad when you say “no” or take something away that isn’t safe to play with. In general there isn’t much Silas isn’t allowed to play with, but of course those few things are so exciting and he gets upset if he doesn’t get his way. Right now the exciting items are: The TV, my glasses, and putting the camera and Iphones into his mouth.
8) Has gotten his first haircut. But it is growing back really fast.
9) Does not lay still on the changing table. He is always rolling over or trying to stand up. We have had to be a bit creative on how to change his diaper.
10) Crawl over the bean bag chair and slide down on his stomach. One time he slid a little too fast and ended up doing a sommersault.
11) Can open all sorts of drawer and cabinets and begin to empty their contents.
12) Can climb up stairs...the very first time he tried he made it all the way up!
