Dear Graham,
Your first year is in the books, buddy, and it was tremendous. Mommy is a little slow with this recap, and you're actually a big thirteen-month-old already! We quietly celebrated your first year last month with family and a few close friends, and you really embraced the concept of birthday parties. :)
You smashed your cake with fanfare and shoveled fist-fulls of cake and icing into your mouth until we removed the sugar bomb to prevent tummy troubles. You opened gifts with the (somewhat aggressive) help of Rowan, and you mostly just basked in the love of everyone who gathered to celebrate you.
You are FAST, Graham. You crawl and boot scoot constantly and can easily get wherever you want to go. In the last week, you've conquered stairs, and can crawl up them, but require close supervision given your tendency to just hurl yourself backward onto your bum, with no regard for the tumble that surely awaits unless someone stands at the ready to catch you. You cruise happily around the furniture, the kitchen island and cabinets, the walls and bedroom furniture. You have stood unassisted for a few seconds, but when you notice that you're doing it, you can't plop yourself to the floor fast enough. You aren't yet ready to walk upright, so we'll just wait and see. :) You will however, dart all about the house and neighborhood grasping tightly to our fingers.
You're consistent in your typical ways: you eat heartily and readily, you transitioned with utmost ease away from bottles and to milk (although we're trying lactose-free as you've displayed some tummy issues of late), you babble all day (mama, dada, bye-bye, gah, uh, nana, etc.) and you grin as you wave, blow kisses, play peek-a-boo, and display that you're "so big." Your growth continues to impress, and you're in 12-18 months sized clothing and we recently moved you into size four diapers. You remain a steadfast sleeper, but a faithful early riser. Lately, that sometimes comes as early as 4:30 a.m. which for the record, is WAY TOO EARLY, kiddo. You're napping twice daily, but I think the morning nap is nearing its end.
You splash giddily in the tub, soar skyward on the swings giggling and squealing, laugh constantly and loudly, chase after your sister and your fur-brothers faithfully, and remain laser focused on doing everything you shouldn't. We've gotten creative with child-proofing this last month, and now even the oven door and stove knobs sport devices intended to keep your busy hands at bay.
You lean in for slobbery kisses, pat my back unprompted, snuggle onto my shoulder for nighttime prayers and songs and books. Speaking of books, you've bloomed into quite the little reader, dragging as many books as you can carry out of the various bins and baskets that contain them, and then flipping through the pages with sweet, pudgy fingers and leaning down so far you're practically nose to nose with the words as you "read" out loud, at perfect pitch.
To state the obvious, you are a joy and you make me a very happy Mama. I hope that you know how loved you are, sweet boy, how perfectly you fit with this family, in this home, in this life. I hope that being part of our family with fill you with love and security and safety and peace, and that you will turn around and pour out those same blessings in your immediate circles, in your community, in the world. As your first year fades to your second, I am so proud of you. My heart bursts with love for you, and every day, I hope you'll be happy and increasingly capable and aware of/comfortable in your own wonderful skin. I hope you will love and be loved, push the boundaries when needed, take the high road almost always, ask tough questions, seek out truths everywhere, on your own terms. And as you do all of these things and more, I hope you will know deep in your heart and with every fiber of your being that you are greatly and unconditionally loved.
Happy birthday, my perfect boy.
Mama
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