13 Months

At 13 Months you:

Walk
Take one nap
Eat more than your 6 year old sister
Wear size 18 month pajamas
Wear size 4 Huggies Diapers
Say DaDa
Say Deedledeedledeedledeedle
Play Pat a Cake
Do all the motions to Eensy Weensy Spider
Wave
Pretend to talk on the phone
Love anything with wheels
Climb stairs
Love the water
Think throwing things for other people to pick up is hilarious
Have 5 and a half teeth
Still have not been in for your one year check up!

We call you Loves His Cat:

We also call you Walks With Cars:

Mostly we call you Loves A Lot!

Happy 13 Month Birthday Baby Boy!

First Steps...First Cousins

We are back from our last trip of the summer. A week at the lake with Dr. Dad's family. All 16 of us!

Just before we left, Baby Boy decided it would be a great time to start venturing out on two feet.

After spending the week basking in the glow of all that glorious cousinly attention, he has really taken off.

Here they all are. The first cousins. In this picture they are ages (in order) 11, 9, 8, 6, 5, 5, 3 and 1.

We are all trying to enjoy the last of the summer weeks.

Baby Girl starts school again September 1st.

Dr. Dad is hard at work.

My general club and volunteer activities will start up in full swing shortly.

Most of all, we will all be chasing after this guy.

Fun!

Happy Anniversary

Twelve years ago today, I married this guy

I think we have lived each and every vow we took on that day. Better, worse, sickness, health, good times, bad, richer, poorer.

Well, except the until death do us part vow. We'd like to wait a while on that one.

We've known each other for sixteen years, nearly half our lives. And we are still in love.

Lucky us!

One Year

Dear Baby Boy,

One year ago today your father and I were up at the crack of dawn and on our way to the hospital to have an amniocentesis to see if you were ready to be born. I was 37 weeks pregnant. We had a scheduled C-Section for July 22nd, so we would do the test to check for lung maturity on the 21st. For some reason, when the nurse told me that a very small percentage of women will go into labor as a result of the test, I thought "well, since it is a small percentage, it will probably happen to me!" So we brought my packed bag and our cameras and left your sister with her Nonna.

Just in case.

While waiting the required hour after the test to see if labor would start (and secretly planning a very non-Gestational Diabetic lunch at McDonald's) the nurse who ALWAYS read my blood pressure as too high came in. I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, she got several high readings and they decided to send us over to the hospital just to make sure everything was ok.

I was still planning my lunch at McDonald's.

While waiting in Triage, lamenting the huge co-pay we would be stuck with for the visit, the doctor on call came over. She wanted to know if I could feel the contractions I was having.

Huh.

Not really.

Until I did.

Ouch.

After that, things went pretty fast.

Dr. Dad barely had time to run to the car and get our cameras, call our families and get back to me. I was taken to the OR and Dr. Dad got on his Daddy Scrubs and it was show time.

You didn't cry when they took you out, and I panicked for that brief moment. Dr. Dad ran over and took a picture of you and they suctioned you out a little bit more and then I heard it.

Your cry.

There you were, at 2:32 pm, 6 lbs. 15 oz and 20 inches long.

You were the perfect ending to our journey. After all that had gone so terribly wrong with my first pregnancy and the birth of your sister, this experience was so wonderfully right. We had done it, had the bad and then the good and amazingly, miraculously, had two healthy, beautiful, wonderful children.

I didn't get my McDonald's that day, but I think what I got instead was a lot better.

This year has been a blur, as everyone told me it would be. We are so busy in our lives as a family of four. To be honest, I haven't enjoyed every minute of it (spit-up, anyone?) but I have loved you every second of it.

I can't wait to see what your next year brings.

And aren't we all just so Lucky.