How we Love Fall!

It's so amazing to me how awesome a 1 year old can be. I'm constantly impressed with how Austin changes everyday, and it's such a neat thing to be able to witness daily. We've had quite the week this past week. We finally got Austin back to sleeping through the night on Wednesday. It seems like every since he started to actually sleep through the night around 7 months, it's never been consistent. I finally got frustrated about two weeks ago and bought a book about the importance of good quality sleep and a good sleeping schedule for babies. As most people know, I'm not really into reading parenting books, because although they give you good tips and advice, you ultimately have to do what's best for you, your family, and most importantly, your child. Although I haven't totally bought into this book, it does offer some amazing tips, and I wish I would have started reading it when Austin was a lot younger. Once I started to read it, I started to feel like we have created and made Austin a bad sleeper. It seems like anytime we do something different in routine (traveling, staying out too late with him, etc.), or he starts to cut teeth, he starts waking up in the middle of the night. We finally got him back to sleeping through the night, but now he wakes up around 6 am! Ouch! We've missed out on things lately because of his sleeping schedule and the fact that we have to be home at the 7:30 lately, but I've started to realize that if your lifestyle doesn't change when you have children, then somethings probably not right! Needless to say, he's happy, well rested, and actually starting to focus on things more attentively then he has before. He's still ornery as ever though!

Austin has started to look for objects a lot more lately. Last night, Jared was hiding a toy dog, and would ask Austin where his puppy was at. Austin kept looking all over for it, and eventually found it. It's too cute to watch the wheels in his brain turning trying to figure the world out. I've been asking him lately also what a puppy does, and he's started to stick out his tongue and pant like a dog. I almost think he should have been a dog for Halloween instead of a firefighter. Austin is just about ready to cut yet another molar. He's currently got 10 teeth, and he's just about got another one making it 11 teeth! Yesterday he even looked under the bed, found the cat, and started pointing at him and saying "dat". I had no idea what he was saying, but I got down on my knees, and sure enough, the cat was under the bed, and Austin had found him. It's such a small thing, but it's such a big milestone for him. And I'm so glad that Jared has afforded us the opportunity for me to witness this stuff daily, I'm so grateful for that.

We got some flower bulbs this week and we needed to plant them before it got too cold outside. Austin LOVES to be outside, so he helped. He tried to eat one of the tulip bulbs, but we caught him before it got too far into his mouth. He was watching Jared a lot, and would "dig" holes with his rake and pushed the mulch around. He's definitely not afraid of getting dirty, and was such a big helper!