What a year

January

first week of bedrest, full of fear of the unknown.

February 

brought hope that our baby boy would have a good chance of survival if he came at that time.

March 

stressful, with a few medical setbacks and many trips to the hospital.

April

our baby boy arrived after a long week of failure (see birth story).

Big shout out to Jared for supporting me through 14 1/2 weeks of bedrest. Thank you for every snack, meal, and bottle of water!

 Love you!

Just before the final induction, 40 weeks exactly.

Miles's first moments

and first days.

May  (1 month)

full of many walks around the neighborhood

 and many more pictures.

June (2 months)

Mommy goes back to work. Sad to leave Miles, but happy he's in good hands with his daddy. 

July (3 months)

family walks and trips to the park. 

August (4 months)

Miles had a few new visitors and a lot of fun.

September  (5 months)

new talents - rolling and supported sitting.

October (6 months)

first visit to the pumpkin patch

and first Halloween.

November (7 months)

new moves

and first Thanksgiving

December (8 months)

first Christmas

new foods

 and self-feeding.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Can't wait to see what 2012 brings.

Falling

Miles doing his new favorite activity

Miles opening a gift

Merry Christmas

More interested in playing with the decorations

 Lights!

Playing with my new running shoes

 Yoga poses

Cuddly cats

 Sleepy Kitty

 Miles loves crackers!

 Opening a present...

 Success!

Gift wrap

Milestone (today!)

-Miles started feeding himself pieces of chicken! (He loves chicken.)

Pictures

Miles has a new favorite place to stand. He loves dropping into my lap and standing back up by the jumparoo.

Playing with his personalized light block.

More interested in toys out of the gift wrap this time.

Simon is also curious what is inside the wrapping paper.

Oooh, box!

Finally got him to tear some paper.

8 months!

Milestones

-Started pushing up onto his hands and knees and rocking yesterday. He gets really frustrated because he doesn't quite know what to do from there. One time he moved from his tummy to sitting by pushing backwards. I think he confused himself when he was sitting all of a sudden.

-Very vocal, but I'm not sure if there are any official words. :)

-Given the go-ahead to try dairy and meat in his diet. He's not a fan of plain yogurt. At all.

Pictures

Bear pictures are getting more difficult because he loves to play with the bear, but they are adorable.

So big!

Possibly blowing a raspberry.

Ta da!

Climbing over the bear.

All smiles.

Buzzing his lips.

 And singing.

Little adrenaline junkie ~ loves being upside down.

 He kept sitting up and then laying backward. So funny.

Blogger is not being very friendly right now, so I'll have many more pictures to come later from the last week!

New toy

Miles got a toy from one of my co-workers. He enjoys it:

And a video of him on the toy

Long video, but Miles does scoot forward a few times

Miles reading a book