Dear Jack: One Year, Three Months

Dear Jack,

You are such a sunshine baby. You are always so happy and laughing. You were cutting in four molars and an incisor all at once, but now you are feeling much better. I love how you engage with each of us in the family, including the pets, in a special way.

You are absolutely nuts about your brother. You adore him. Everything he does is hilarious to you, and I'm happy to say that any sharing squabbles you two used to have rarely come up as an issue anymore. Instead, you play together great and he loves making you laugh as much as you love laughing at him.

You are way more adventurous than I remember your brother being, and you are so proud of yourself when you do something you aren't supposed to. You climb on toys and chairs and stairs and everything. In the bath, you throw all of the bottles down and try to climb up the shelves. When I fuss at you, you just smile and sit down. Such a stinker. However, you also get your fair share of accidents out of your antics. You fall and hurt yourself at least once a day.

You are a horrible eater. HORRIBLE. I can't even get you to eat crackers. What in the world? You live mostly off of baby food packets (ones with banana), yogurt, and strawberry milk. You continue to growth and thrive, and I keep on offering new foods and the same foods, just as I have since you were five months old. The doctor says you'll grow out of it....

You are wearing some 18-month clothes and some 12-month clothes. The 12-month clothes are tight,, but some 18-month clothes look baggy on you. It's a tough balance. At your 15-month appointment, you weighed 21 pounds and were 31 inches tall. Catching up to Eliot all the time.

Speaking of catching Eliot, you love to chase him and pull on his shirt. He lets you do this, but sometimes he goes too fast and you fall. When you find him laying on the ground, you are quick to tackle him. And he lets you.

Lately, your speech has been all centered on "ball". I know you can say other words, and you do sometimes, but you just love to say "ball". It started with the dogs.... You started calling them "ball," which I figured was from playing fetch so much. And then you started saying it for everything. Silly boy. You used to say "this" for most things, so I'm sure you will grow to like another word as your vocabulary is always growing and changing.