Tuesday, November 06, 2007

One Year Old

updated:now with photos--finally!




One year old. I really don't know how this happened. I know I said it before, but I really am in a little bit of shock here. I promise this is the last comparison I make to your sister, but it seemed to take much longer for her to make it to a year. Now here you are, crawling around--a little person, so far removed from the baby in the picture up there.

You have always had a sweet disposition--happy and content, though now you are throwing age-appropriate tantrums. I say age appropriate because I took you to the Dr. yesterday and he asked if you were tantruming and I realized that yes, you are and when I said that he seemed almost pleased. You get mad when I take things away you shouldn't have, when I set you down when you want to be carried, when I don't set you down when you want to get down, when you wake up at 5 AM and realized that we aren't in your room to get you up but to try to get you to fall back asleep, and when you are sitting in your highchair and there is not food in front of you RIGHT. NOW. We switched your car seat to front facing yesterday and for the first time you threw a fit when I went to put you back in it after running errands. You straightened your little body out so I couldn't strap you in, crunched up your face, and grunted with rage.

This past week it's like you were completely aware that you knew you were about to turn one. You started waving bye-bye and crawling. You suddenly seemed so much older. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I noticed something was different. I know I'm not completely crazy, because Driver mentioned the same thing to me yesterday.

You have started holding your socks up to my nose after I take them off of you so I can smell them and say "P.U.--stinky!" You blow on your food the second you see anyone else at the table do it. You are mimicing everything we do--though your favorite thing to mimic is clapping. Tonight your sister and I were making tooting noises with our mouths while we were eating supper (oh, yea, we are that classy) and you thought it was hysterical. After you got done laughing your adorable little laugh, you tried making the same noises with your mouth. The problem was that all of your toot noises weren't quite 'toot' and more like blowing raspberries, but you still thought you were pretty awesome.

Your favorite thing to do is make noise. You love to bang things together, or bang objects against anything close to you--the floor, the wall, the refrigerator...whatever will make a nice, gratifying noise. You also love to take baths. You have no problem with getting a cup of water dumped over your head, and you have a great talent for bending over to try to take drinks from the bath water. Your favorite thing to do is to splash as hard as you can. You throw your whole body into it, and when water is dripping off of all of us and the walls you squeal with glee and do it over and over until I've had enough and pull you out of the bath to dry off.

You have this really annoying habit of trying to get out of peoples' arms when they are holding you. You wriggle and squirm and all but throw yourself forcibly down on the ground, but then when you do get set down you start to cry and turn around and hold your arms up to get picked up again. I really don't know what that's all about. Maybe once you get down you realize the floor wasn't as glorious as you once thought. I thought crawling would do away with this, but that is not the case.

I know I said before that this year has flown by, and it has, but I have a hard time remembering clearly what it was like before you were here. Before you were born the thing I was most apprehensive about was the changing of our family dynamic. We only had Back Seat Girl, and it was hard for me to think about a baby who wasn't her. Especially a boy baby. But then you were born and we fell in love with you and I can't remember what it was like to have just one baby. I can't imagine not having you in our lives, just like those nights when Driver was at school and Back Seat Girl was in bed and it was just me and my belly and my thoughts, and I had a hard time imagining what it would be like to bring another baby into the house. I can't believe how lucky I am that you were the baby in that big belly. I think about that all of the time, when we are out and people are admiring you, but especially when it's just you and me and I don't have to share you. I think about how lucky I am that out of all the people in this world, I get to be your mama, that God chose me to care for you and teach you and love you, you precious baby boy.

I love you so much.

Happy First Birthday, Little Man.



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