1st Birthday

One year ago today . . .

Here I was, getting ready to head to the hospital for my scheduled c-section (Cass was breech) . . . I was huge!!! Believe it or not, I still had 8 days until my due date . Whew, I was so glad I had him early!

August 16, 2007 1:19 PM - Casimiro Cruz Garcia arrived, weighing in at 7 lbs 7 ozs. Here we are, meeting the little guy that will change our lives forever! :)

Soooo tiny!!! Look at him in Chris's hands!

One year later . . .

It's amazing how much Cass has changed and what he can do now. His accomplishments over the past year include:

• pat-a-cake (I think this was his breakthrough move)
• waving "hi" and "bye", and anything in between
• "give me five"
• dancing - for those of you that grew up in the 80's and 90's, he does a dance similar to one you are familiar with called the "cabbage patch" :)
• playing peek-a-boo
• learning some baby sign language - making the "milk" sign, but I'm still not sure he knows what it means, and making the "fan" sign, which to him means a fan or any light fixture
• calling a guy in the grocery store "dada", and then realizing several weeks later that this word only pertains to Chris
• saying "mama" (the best sound in the world to me!!)
• saying "dog-gee" when he sees our dogs Norm and Tina
• standing up on his own without holding on to anything (his record is about 15 seconds before he falls)
• walking while holding on to furniture
• shaking his head violently from side to side any time I say "no, no, no!"
• snapping his fingers - we don't remember snapping around him, so we don't know where he picked that up

This past year has been an adventure, and it has flown by! It serves as a reminder that we need to savor every minute with our little man - he'll grow up too fast! We are so grateful to have such a wonderful, healthy little boy. Here are some pics of his big day today . . .

Today the big man turned 1!!! Where has our baby gone???!!! He was very busy opening his presents and would not sit still, so this is the best picture I could get. Great Aunt Linda and Uncle Al sent this adorable outfit with the matching crown - isn't the crown hilarious??!!!

And here is the famous cake picture - it was Cass's first exposure to sugar. He didn't really like it. He played in it a little, and then finally ate some of it. I don't think it agreed with him, because shortly after he ate the cake and drank his milk, it "came back up"! :( Then, he was wired the rest of the day. He was crawling around the house yelling, and after I put him to bed I found him standing in his crib laughing and pounding the crib. He definitely was on a sugar high!!!

First Haircut

Before . . .

and After!!!

When Cass was about 9 months old, I tried to cut his hair, but after I trimmed his bangs, I had to stop - I just couldn't bring myself to give him a complete haircut yet. Now that Cass is turning one year old Saturday, I figured it was time to get his hair cleaned up. So, I stuck him in the highchair this afternoon, and using my secret weapon to distract him (cheese of course, as evidenced by his face in the bottom picture), I clipped away! I think I did pretty good for my first time! :)

New ride

Even though we live in Tar Heel country, I'm going to do my best to raise Cass to be a K-State fan. How do you like his new carseat? Cass loves it! Although he is a little guy and we had one of the larger infant carseats, it was definitely time for us to upgrade him to a big boy seat - he's much more comfortable now!

Teething again

Here are some pictures of Cass last weekend - the spout on this sippy cup is soft, so he was biting the spout and carrying the cup around in his mouth, while he looked out the window . . .

. . . crawled from toy to toy . . .

. . . played with his toys. . .

. . . and smiled for the camera.

Later in the week, I realized why he was doing this . . looks like teeth #5 and #6 are coming in! He had a couple rough nights during the week when he woke up crying. Hopefully the worst is over!

New game

In a prior post, I talked about how much Cass loves to sit in his Pack n' Play and play with his toys. Well, as you can see from the picture, he's discovered a "new game" to play . . . he throws all the toys out, then whines until Mama puts them all back in, and then we do it all over again. And again . . . and again . . . . :)

More Cheese Pics

My typical Wednesday consists of getting to spend most of the day playing with Cass. :) Then, during his naps, I check the grocery ads, get my laundry going, work out on my elliptical trainer while watching Food Network and reading a magazine at the same time (you know a mom is always multi-tasking!!), and after Cass's naps we head out for our weekly grocery shopping. After having this routine for a while, I've learned how to keep Cass content when we get home so I can get the groceries put away . . . .CHEESE!!! As you may have seen in one of my previous posts, shredded cheese is Cass's favorite food and he makes quite a mess with it. I snapped some "action shots" of him eating his cheese this afternoon. After I took the tray off of his travel high chair (which we are temporarily using because his regular chair needs to be disassembled and deep cleaned because there is shredded cheese in every nook and cranny), I could see that most of it ended up in his chair.

Friday

Work has been busy lately and I haven't posted for a while, so I got a few pictures of Cass today. We have a "Pack n' Play" set up in our living room but really hadn't put Cass in it very much - we primarily just used it to store Cass's toys so the dogs wouldn't get them. It seemed kind of like a cage so we felt bad putting Cass in there and hadn't even tried it. However, one day when Daddy was watching Cass he put him in there, and Cass loved it! I guess it's no surprise, since there are so many toys in there. If you look close, you'll see an orange "toy" by Cass's left hand - that's Daddy's beer koozie that Cass likes to play with. :)

Here's another one of Cass in his Pack n' Play, peeking over the edge. See what he's holding in his hand? It's a rubber spoon that his Great Aunt Linda and Uncle Al gave him, he loves it because the entire thing is thick rubber so it's sort of flimsy and great to chew on. I have heard that around this age kids will pick some sort of toy or blanket as a security item, so I've been waiting to see what he chooses. I think this is it. The last couple nights, he gets a hold of it around 5:00 at night, and it stays with him the rest of the night . . . through dinner, through the bath, through nursing before bed, through brushing his teeth, and into bed. It's hilarious. I sneak into his room once he's asleep and take it out of his crib because I'm a worry-wort . . . I'm sure he can't hurt himself with it, but I worry about some freak accident where he'll choke on it in his crib or something. He doesn't seem to miss it when he wakes up in the morning, but he sure is glad to see it when it reappears during the day!

It's amazing the things that entertain Cass . . . I think he'd pick the spicy brown mustard bottle over a toy any day. I had to re-arrange our refrigerator so that the plastic condiment bottles were on the lower shelves, because the minute we open the fridge door he's there looking for something to play with.