My little Jerome turns ONE! Happy 1st Birthday!

Exactly a year ago on this very day, i had the most bizarre gynae appointment ever, which landed me in the hospital for child delivery WITHOUT the husband by my side. Unthinkable right?

and fast forward today, my little chubby baby koala turns ONE! Has it really been *ONE* year already? It went by in a whizz and i can’t say i remember much of it.  Having 2 kids really takes up a lot more of your time, and i have been slacking on his development milestones. Each month, i meant to write, and ended up postponing the post, or having a half written post in my draft folder and the last i wrote was his 8th month milestone.. and then it was silence. Oh wait, did i change my job role 4 months ago? That’s how busy i have been..

SO, while i havent been looking much.. here’s what happened.

1. The kid started TALKING and boy, is he a chatterbox. he knows MAMA, PAPA, MUM MUM, KOK (i have no idea what it meant) and a whole bunch of gibberish that i have yet to decipher.

2. He started WALKING! Well, he has been cruising for the longest time and then.. in the last month, he started taking steps unassisted and the feeling of seeing him wobble into my arms is… *melts*

3. He SCREAMS the house down when you don’t give him the due attention.

4. He’s definitely the DRAMA BABY, because he expects to be picked up when he sees you and establish eye contact. If you don’t go to him and pick him up into your arms the moment you reach home and gets spotted, he will burst into tears. The sight of those big fat tears rolling down the face is *heartache*.

5. He is a really really fast crawler! He gets to places faster than i can walk and it is hilarious watching him scramble to where he wants to go. And unfortunately, like Jerry, he is pretty much the monkey and SCALE HEIGHTS whenever possible – up the table, up the chairs, to the highest point of the sofa, grab on the windows grills etc.

6. He has BOISTEROUS LAUGHTER. He’s like the super smiley baby all the time. Nothing much pretty gets him down except for falls , the lack of hugs or attention or hunger. Most of the time, he laughs at everything and we figured it might be because of his chinese name – 家乐 （literally translated as ‘family happy’).

Food wise, he eats similar stuff as Jerry but a more mashed up version or minus some ingredients like eggs. he still cannot quite chew anything yet, despite having quite a number of teeth at his age. we are slowly progressing him to our usual food, but i probably have to take it slow because he almost gagged a few times.

Sleep wise, he is still WAKING UP FOR MILK! This is the toughest thing that i struggled with a lot. I can’t even ignore him when i try. He’s super loud and cries till he is being fed. Argh! I am constantly in serious lack of sleep because of his 3 hrly schedules. There is once or twice where we got lucky and he slept through, but compared to Jerry who slept through the night at 4 months, we really had it bad this time. I hope we permanently strike gold and would soon have him sleep through. I honestly am unable to concentrate at work sometimes because of sleep deprivation.

and i guess that’s it! Here’s a picture of him every month and how he has grown.

Happy birthday my dearest chubby baby. You will forever be the baby koala that we love to cuddle very much. Mama wish you’ll grow up to be a healthy, happy baby that never fails to bring delight to others. Love you loads.