It's 11:20 pm and the house is quiet. Everyone else is in bed, where I should be. But, while I am feeling extremely tired, I am also feeling extremely grateful. My baby turned one day, and I am grateful for his life, for his health, for the opportunities of the past year to love and to grow.
The first birthday celebration is the party that the child could do without. But the mother, never. I need to celebrate this wonderfully hard, wonderfully joyful year of adjusting to a new spirit in our home, a spirit that came with his own agenda and his own personality, and of adjusting to a new body in our home, a body that came with demands that I must meet, often before meeting my own. I need the first birthday celebration to reflect on how we have grown together, this little guy and me, this little guy and us as a family. I am grateful tonight for the chance I was given, one year ago today, to love yet another person with such breadth and depth.
Because we're in Utah (and have been for 2 weeks now), we had a big shin-dig: We went swimming all afternoon. J cooked us up some of his famous pasta, meatballs, sausage. H had 2 servings. We played memory with pics of H throughout the past year. H (with help from all of his cousins and siblings!) opened presents. I made H an egg-free cake and the rest of the hooligans egg-full cupcakes. H thoroughly enjoyed his cake, and after a quick bath for H, we capped it all off with sparklers. Happy Birthday, to our favorite little H, who is really not-so-little any longer!
My 4 favorite things about H:
(1) His hugs and kisses, especially after he wakes up
(2) His "Whoa!" when he sees any interesting food or contraption
(3) His smile--he smiles with his whole face/body
(4) His love of books. He'll tear anything and everything apart, but not books. He sits and flips through them. A boy after my own heart.
