One

A letter to my son on his first birthday.

Dear Baby O,

At seven and a half months old alongside your brother, you flew halfway across the world and made our family whole.  You weren't quite your spunky self at that point-you were recovering from a serious infection resulting from the chicken pox.  The antibiotics made you groggy and for the first week or so, we were only able to catch a glimpse of your exuberant personality.  At one year old, you are bright in every way that I can think of-facial expressions, movements and your laugh has been known to stop traffic in an entire grocery store.

In the past two weeks alone, you have managed to not only outgrow all of your 6-9 month old clothes, but now without warning, the 12 month old clothes are getting tight (in just two weeks!).  I thought we had at least a few months before you needed a new wardrobe and I don't think you were disappointed this evening that most of your presents were clothes as I wrapped each outfit in different size boxes and lots of tissue paper for your entertainment.

You love your big brother so much. In fact for months after you arrived, he was the only one who could make you belly laugh by just entering the room or making a funny face. Daddy O and I were quite envious of his skills at times. We would try to do the exact same thing and you would look at us like we were crazy. It took us a while to each develop our own 'belly laugh' skills.

You are an extremely inquisitive and active baby!  You have this amazing ability to find the one kernel of popcorn that I missed while vacuuming and love to hold it up to me from across the room between your index finger and thumb, smile and put it in your mouth one millisecond before I reach you.

You are crawling and cruising everywhere now, can stand up on your own and take more tentative steps each day.  My heart jumps in my throat all the time-climbing over baby gates and managing to get yourself in the strangest of places. You will be walking very soon, but sometimes I hesitate to encourage you, thinking that a few more days of less mobility might be advantageous for me. 

Going hand in hand with being active, you eat a lot.  And I mean a lot.  This morning for breakfast you ate two good sized bananas, a hefty bowl of oatmeal and of course a side of cheerios.  You also seemed to enjoy your first piece of cake-it was a two layer pineapple/apple cake (supposed to be three, but I ruined one layer-why do I always insist on making the most complicated recipe?).

Our celebration of this milestone was pretty mellow-just you, me, Dad, and your brother-who I might add was a tad jealous of all the attention and presents.  He tried hard to 'help' you open your presents, but once you were preoccupied with all the boxes and paper, it was hard to stop him and you didn't seem to mind. 

I feel old now because I see that the days are going by too quickly and you are growing up before my eyes. 

Happy Birthday and wishing you many more to come, much love,

Mommy O