My son Ryder turns 1 year and 1 month this week...or 13 months. I'm not sure which is correct. I do know that up to a certain point in a child's life, it seems more common to refer to their age in months, rather than years...and clothing is labeled accordingly.

The past couple weeks have really been about starting some traditions between Ryder and I. The big change is the introduction of a new bedtime routine. For the first 13 months (or 396 days) of his life, my wife, Ryder's mom, Angie has handled 100% of the feedings since Ryder never took to a bottle...and now came the time to change that. We figured the night time feeding would be the toughest to break him of, so that's where we started, which became a great bonding opportunity for Ryder and I.

What we do is...every night at 8:30 Angie says goodnight to Ryder, and then heads downstairs. Ryder and I head back to his room, get him all jammied up, and sit down with a sippie cup of milk and 5 or 6 of his favorite books. The first few nights were surprisingly successful...he was actually asleep in less than 30 minutes, and fell asleep each of the nights half-way through his "That's Not My Monster!" book. So, we're still in the early stages of this transition, but it's really going pretty well so far...and I feel like it's given us a tradition that could realistically go on for several years. And, just maybe....eventually, we could include Mom. Ryder and I will talk. :)