Happy Birthday James!

Wow. One year old. It truly is amazing what a difference a year makes-for James and for us. It seems like an eternity ago that I woke up to my water breaking and driving to the hospital not even knowing if we were having a son or a daughter. Now here we are a year later as a family of 3 with a little boy! I wish that I was a better writer and could put into words all of the emotions that I have about James turning one. This is such a big milestone, not only for him, but for me and Tim too. We learned that nothing in the world is better than seeing your child smile at you, or sweeter than having your baby fall asleep on your chest. We learned how to be parents this year, and have enjoyed doing it together.
James has gone from being a squinchy little baby with baggy skin in an incubator with a tube down his nose, to a babbling, laughing, little boy that is constantly on the move and getting into everything that he is not supposed to. We have loved watching James grow and change so much this year. James has started crawling on his hands and knees in the past few weeks, although he reverts to his army crawl when he is really in a hurry to get somewhere. He now has 5 1/2 teeth and is eating all table foods for 3 meals a day and a snack. We still mash up some stuff, but he is pretty much done with purees now. James is still an enthusiastic nurser and nurses about 3-4 times a day and 1-2 times at night. I still enjoy nursing him (well sometimes not so much at 3 in the morning) and it is such a comfort to him, we will continue with this until it is not working so well for both of us. James still does not have any words, although he babbles mama and dada all the time, I do not think that he is using them with meaning yet, but I think he will be soon. James has started to show us that he understands some of what we are saying to him. He will do lots of things on command when we ask him to including; clapping, blowing kisses, raising the roof, giving kisses, and turning up his hands to show that he is all done. He is still very attached to me and wants to be held all the time, but only if I am around. When I leave him with other people, he does great. He still enjoys playing with balls and blocks a lot, expecially banging blocks together, and pounding on balls. He is pulling himself up on anything that he can, and has started to do 1 or 2 steps when pushing toys that move. James seems to enjoy all of the activities that we do together, especially Gymboree. He now gets excited when he sees that is where we are going, and will crawl around and explore and climb on things without me right by his side. The thing about James that surprises the most is how shy he is. He will often turn his head into us and not look at new people. It takes him a few minutes to get used to new people, but will sometimes surprise us and reach for new people. I do notice that he is much more shy and cautious than other babies his age at the activities that we do. He likes to watch other people, especially bigger kids. We love watching him try new things and develop into a "real" person rather than just a baby.

This year has gone so quickly for us, that I can only imagine how quickly the next years will go. As James gets older, we find ourselves enjoying him and loving him even more, even though it never seems possible to love him more than we do right at this moment. Happy Birthday James, you are our sweetest thing and we love you so much!