My second son, sweet little Pickle, was born on Christmas morning 2008. Hence, this year he is a year old. He is a such a great little guy. I worry (way too much my husband would say) about his birthday falling on Christmas. I don't want him to feel slighted or overlooked in the midst of all the celebrating. Hopefully our tradition of Birthday Festivals will help protect against that and we'll continue to find ways to single him out and let him know how happy we are that he is part of our family.
What can I tell you about Pickle? He is 25 months younger than Peanut so they're pretty close together agewise. We started calling him Pickle when he was just a newborn. All the swaddling blankets that we had were green and he spent a lot of time wrapped up and he just looked like a sweet little Pickle. :) I'm sure he'll hate it someday, but for now we call him Pickle at least as often as we use his given name.
Pickle is a happy guy. He has a great big smile and he's quick to flash it around. He loves to laugh and when he gets overtired he goes from grumpy to slap happy and he just thinks everything is hysterical. He adores his brother. Almost nothing can make him smile as fast as seeing Peanut does. He follows him around, tries to playwith him, and generally gets in the way of what Peanut is trying to do. Peanut is a great big brother though and tolerates a lot of Pickle's babyish misbehavior. Seeing them laugh and play together makes my heart happy like few other things.
Pickle is noisy! :) This boy likes to talk. He can say "mama, dada, uh-oh, wow, ow, hey, and hi". He'll also tr to imitate almost any word that we say to him as well. His first phrase was/is "hi dada" and it's adorable to hear. He also does signs even though we're not as consistent with him as we were with Peanut. Sorry, buddy! He can do light, mom, dad, all-done, more, tree, and I think there's another one that I'm forgetting. Again, he can imitate a lot more after we show them to him, but those are the ones he'll do spontaneously. The rest of the time he's making noises, cooing, babbling, shrieking, yelling, chatting, etc. He started making baby noises pretty early and he hasn't stopped yet. I don't know where he got his talkativeness from...
He also likes to EAT. I think he might be a world-record holder for fastest time to consume a banana and number of bananas eaten in a day. He's a fiend. Mandarin oranges are another favorite, and peaches, and pears...he likes fruit. He also eats vegetables pretty well too. He's not quite as carb-crazy as his mother and brother are, but I bet that will come in time. :) He's pretty fiercely vegetarian at this point though as he repeatedly refuses to eat any kind of meat. He's recently mastered the sippy cup when he got ahold of one that had Peanut's chocolate milk in it.... He's also pretty adament that he is not done nursing yet though. We are weaning (seeing as I need him to be fully, completely, and happily boob-free while I'm in Ethiopia), but we're taking our time about it. He gets pretty cranky when he thinks it's time to nurse and he still thinks bottles are lame.
We're definitely seeing a lot of his personality these days as he is figuring out what he wants and protesting quite vigorously when he can't have it. 11 months old marked his first "baby fit" and they're pretty funny to see as he shrieks and flings himself backward or kicks his little feet. He loves to climb steps and is pretty steady at standing up and cruises furniture like a champ, but doesn't walk independently yet. He likes music and dancing and is a still a mama's boy.
I'm just so happy that he's in our family and I love seeing him grow and seeing how his personality is similiar and different from Peanut's. It's fun getting to know him and while I love my babies when they are babies I LOVE love the toddler stage (good thing since I'm going to have a housefull of them) and so I'm really excited to see where this next year takes Pickle.
Happy Birthday, sweet boy!!
