What an oldie!

Our little man turned one this week. WOW! I can’t believe just how wonderful he is, and just how much I am in love with everything he does. I was just going to write “except how early he wakes up,” but even then, he’s so full of curiosity and eager get-go that I can’t help but love that too about him. 🙂

This year has been the rollercoaster that everyone talks about. Every word was true. Yes, we are always tired. No, we have no idea how we used to squander our precious “extra” time that we no longer have. Yes, it’s all worth it when he smiles.

But you know, nothing anyone ever said really quite… clicked. Nothing they had said made me understand just how awe-inspiring being his parent was going to be. So many times, I cradled him to me while he slept, just smelling the top of his head and wondering how could he be so perfect?

I remember the first crazy days in the hospital. He lay there, swaddled up tight with his silly hospital hat, and I couldn’t believe he was finally here. We were so tired, but even as we were falling sleep on our feet, we fought off sleep to just take one more look at him, to hold him one more time, to touch his little ears and nose and fingers, because we couldn’t get enough. He was finally out and I just wanted to hold him all the time.

I remember seeing his fingers and toes, and how much his toenails looked like Seppo’s. His nails were so thin that the tips would bend at the slightest touch and break off like bits of tissue paper. His eyebrow line already looked like his dad’s. His tiny nose was so tiny it was hard to tell whose it more resembled. 🙂 The little part between the nose and the mouth looked like Seppo too. Seppo said he looked just like me. Regardless, he was 100% ours and a marvel to behold.

There were times the nurses found us in the hospital room, weeping because we were so overwhelmed. We were tired and didn’t know what to do to comfort our tiny, vulnerable, helpless baby, and that in turn made us feel helpless. We wanted to do our very best for our little one, but we found we had no confidence, only heart.

We brought him home. We had help but it was still hard to learn his cues, so figure out when he wanted food, when he needed to be changed, and when he wanted just to be held. Slowly, we figured it out. As we did, we could see how he was changing, and how fast!

At first, he just started to keep his eyes open more. Then he started to stare intently at specific things, so much so that his little brows would crinkle down. He couldn’t hold his neck up yet, or really turn on his own very well, so he’d stare out sideways sometimes. 🙂

And fast forward a year, and he’s almost walking! He’s vocal, he has wants, he has a ridiculously silly sense of humor, he is curious about everything, he is fiercely independent and goal-oriented, he strives and reaches and goes. Always, he is going.

Everyday that I am with him, he fills me with laughter and joy at his weird, silly, funny, persistent self. He experiments over and over with things to see how they behave. Will this ball bounce the same as the block? Will this spoon make the same sound as this train?

He loves his rattles and xylophones and drums. He loves music, unexpected things, inside jokes, being totally nude. Oh yes, he giggles and crawls away as fast as he can when you take his clothes off to change him or give him a bath. He’s a sneaky one! He loves the wind in his face from whatever source and the rainbow-colored pinwheels at his daycare, so much so that I got a couple to put outside his window for him. He stops his play to stand up and peek out the window, waving when the pinwheels spin.

I… Seriously, this post could go on and on. I could write a whole NaNoWriMo’s worth (50,000 words) of the ways he is amazing and the ways we love him. I wish I could capture every moment perfectly, so that he can know the ways he’s changed us and made our lives infinitely better. If he ever reads this as an adult, I hope he’ll know just how much we love him and how much we love being his mommy and daddy.

I can’t even imagine what next year will bring, little one. I look forward to every minute.

I have to end with this ridiculously adorable outfit from our friends UCDV that Seppo dressed him in:

What?! One year?!?!

Yes, our little man is almost a year old. WHAT A YEAR. WHAT? I’M YELLING, YOU SAY?

Ahem. Sorry about that. It was just so exciting. I was trying to keep from getting choked up by becoming intensely loud. What a year. What a baby. What a husband. What a crazy life. 🙂

“Stuff baby does” update (I’ll upload videos and pics in a later post as it’s late at night and I need to hit the sack):

• He is a daredevil, our little one. Back in August, he mastered the  “flop face first into the bed by letting his hands slide out from under him, using a slippery boardbook to facilitate” maneuver. He would intentionally flop then giggle. Then sometime in the last few weeks, he mastered the art of “standing up on our bed, holding the rails of his crib, then throwing himself dramatically backwards then giggling like mad”, which scared the pants off me the first few times I saw it. It still makes me nervous that he’ll try to do this somewhere not on the bed, but so far, he’s been keeping his crazy shenanigans to the bed.
• He eats everything and nothing. If I’m eating it, he wants some. But not enough to fill his little belly. If I make something for him, he doesn’t want it if there are too many components (either flavor or textures) at once. Mix in some chunky bits in yogurt and he spits it out, but let him bite into his own pear/cheese/bagel/whatever or give him pureed fruit in that yogurt, and he chomps down with no problems.
• He has acquired the ability to say his M’s which thrills me to no end. 🙂 He’s had his D’s for a while now. I often hear him say, “Mamamamamamama umma mamammama umma.” Umma is Korean for mommy so I love this, even though it’s clear he’s not actually associating the sound w/ me yet.
• He took his first steps this week! I think he might actually try to walk before his first birthday. I tell him there is no rush, that he can go at his own speed. But he sure is trying hard! 🙂 I have a video of his wobbling for 1.5 steps that i’ll upload later.
• He’s learned to drink from sippy cups and somewhat from real cups. 😀 His favorite drinking vessels are his straw sippy cup and my sports bottle.
• He loves the drums! Everyday, he crawls over to the Rockband drumkit and grabs the sticks to bang against the heads. If you lift him onto the stool, he loves it because he can reach the high hat. 🙂
• He tries to kiss us by opening his big slobbery mouth and eat our nose/mouth. It’s wonderful and gross. Really wonderful, but really gross. Hahahahaa.
• His wave hello and good-bye transformed from a really aggressive “chop chop chop” motion (imagine you are using your open hand to chop down at a 45 degree angle into someone neck, and you’ve got the right idea) to a really floppy one. It’s interesting because I think he’s experimenting with his various joints and how he can create different kinds of motion.
• He claps when you say “jjak jjak jjak” (or maybe “chak chak chak”? — onomatopoetic word for clap), points his index finger into the open palm of his other hand when you say “gonji gonji gonji” (might actually be “kwon/gwun ji” meaning “hand” and “finger”), shakes his head when you say “dori dori dori” (means “turn”), and bops his head with his hands when you say “dol dol dol” (hilariously, this means “rock” which implies your head is full of rocks!).

There is so much more, but I need to hit the sack!