Happy Birthday to my Baby

It is your birth day little one and that day will ALWAYS be as special to me as it is to you :)

I relive the days/hours before my babies' births as their birthdays approach. Ask me in a year what I did each hour of today and I will not be able to tell you but the end of each of my pregnancies is seared into my memory and hopefully always will be. I like looking back at myself at a time right before life changed. In the days before Jack was born, I just had no idea. In the days before Cora was born, I had no idea how simple life was with just one child. Same with life before Luke. Looking back at those weeks, everything seems simpler.

These last few days, I've just marveled though that one year ago I DID NOT KNOW this child. Tonight, as I put Luke to bed, I was lingering. Singing him all my favorite lullabies: Edelweiss (changing Edelweiss to Baby Luke), You are My Sunshine, and Stay with me, Lord Jesus. Now I have known him for a whole year and, of course, cannot imagine my life without him.  

If you ever want to just talk and talk and talk, get me started on the subject of having babies. It is likely we are done, we definitely probably should be done, but I have found the experience to be magical and miraculous and it makes me sad to think I'm through that time in my life. So I've been all kinds of sentimental recently.

But what keeps me at a place of contentment is that I feel I have drunk in this past year and enjoyed it so much. I have been crazy busy and can't say I haven't missed a lot because of the warp speed our life is running at these days. BUT I have appreciated and savored and lingered.

LUKE

He's still the baby to beat all babies at 12 months :) Will he one day be challenging? It's hard to imagine. He's still the magical sleeper - 12 hours no matter what. And we still find him in his crib in the morning, usually awake, just quietly sucking his thumb, patiently waiting for someone to come get him.

He's lovable and now is loved to the point that we are having fights and tears about who gets to sit by him at meals. Argh. !#%!%  

21 lbs 13 oz of loving

12 month photo shoot went something like this

Best shot!

He is matter of fact. Put a food in front of him he's not interested in? No mind. Without a sound of protest, he'll just swipe it right off his tray. It doesn't matter if he ate it yesterday; if he doesn't want it now, he doesn't give it a second glance. This makes packing his lunch hard as you never know when he's going to be "over" a certain food. And he won't let you put food in his mouth unless it's something on a spoon. So it's hard to get him to try something. If he doesn't like the look of that plum slice, there's no way of getting him to know what it tastes like.

Current favorite foods: bananas!!, blueberries, oranges, oatmeal, bread, warm roasted vegetables (but not cold!).  

He's still a great nurser. He may be moving from 6 to 5 feedings a day and that one dropped feeding is all my baby-mommy heart can take right now. Let's keep taking baby steps on that one Luke!

As for baby steps, he's still very laid back in this area. He is starting to pull up more regularly, but doesn't cruise. He crawls to get around and he's fast. We have been standing him up behind a wagon or push toy and he can take steps that way, though he looks like an old man barely able to handle his walker :) So precious.

Old Man Luke with his walker

Luke's favorite facial expression - scrunched up nose :) :)

He's a handful for sure as crawling babies are. Always a new place to explore and oblivious to the word no. He can pop out outlet covers and loves to put them in his mouth. We keep discovering him with small things in his mouth, thankfully always right away. He loves to eat shoes (so, so gross). He hates to be contained. He acts like it's the ultimate betrayal when we put him in the exersaucer now.  

He has become more attached to me and cries pitifully when left in the church nursery or when someone else besides Momma wants to hold him. He also sometimes cries now when I leave his classroom, but he loves his teachers and is so comfortable there that those cries are short lived.

He clearly says "mama," "da-da," "dja-dja" for his brother, and "nana" for his favorite food.  He can sign "more" and he loves to clap and wave.

Time go slowly please.