Taking inventory

Ahh, how quickly a baby's first year passes. A year ago today I was packing my hospital bag, putting the infant carseat back into the car for the third time, packing overnight bags for Kyle and Natalie so they could stay overnight at a friend's house, and preparing to check myself into the hospital overnight to be induced early the next morning. I was seriously looking forward to being able to sleep on my stomach again after months of rolling around like a whale in the bed every night.

I was also panicking a little bit about what kind of disruption a new baby was going to cause in our organized little life and how Natalie was going to take her displacement from the position of 'the baby.'

I wasn't suffering from the second-time mommy uncertainty of how I was going to possibly love another baby the way I loved my first. I already knew how that worked. I was looking forward to having another little munchkin to love.

My Brandon turns one tomorrow, and I cannot believe it. It's been such a busy year--Brandon was only about a month old when we found out we were moving from Texas to Newfoundland. With each child the first year passes more quickly, and with Brandon it's seemed to fly right past us since he's been so eager to grow up.

Brandon kisses, dances and gives high fives on request. He has four teeth, making him the toothiest of all my kids at a year old. He walks--no, he runs. He doesn't drink from bottles anymore, and he's lived in two different countries. He also says Mama, Daddy, Brandon, hi, ball, book, Pooh (as in, Winnie the Pooh), uh-oh, and thank you. None of them sound much like the real word, of course, but he knows what they mean, and he's trying to say them. That's what counts, right? That's a pretty good list of accomplishments if we're taking inventory. Okay, it's impressive to me, but I'm biased.

*Sigh*

Tomorrow I'm going to be happy and excited, and I'm going to sing and wear a party hat. I'm going to take a ton of pictures of the Elmo cake I'm going to try to make in a little while. (That'll probably end up being a blog post all by itself if my culinary experiences up until now are any indication.) But today I'm going to be just a little bit sad that my baby will be one tomorrow.