Baby James is One

Well, the day has come.  Baby James is finally one!  The bottle will soon be a distant memory, the little booger is finally sleeping at a somewhat manageable pace (knock on wood), the babies are all gone from my house and I have a toddler and a preschooler now.  Scary!  And, wonderful!  But enough about me...

How about this guy?  Super cute, super trouble, super fun.  What a ham.  I do not remember Joel Andrew having this much personality when he was James' age.  My husband tells me it was there, but I am skeptical.  I think Joel was the more quiet of the two, the better behaved, the one that enjoyed spending time with his family but you would really show him the toys, you would really take him on walks, you were really holding up the end there.  James is quite the opposite.  Probably needs to be since he is the second child, but he is the one grabbing the toys, handing them to me.  He is the one trying to talk already, and he is the one letting me know when something is not his favorite.

When he does these things, it is perhaps the cutest thing in the whole world.  Yes, I am a mom gushing over her child right now.  No need to read my blog if you are not into this, but I have to.  This is our little journal of our time together, and I am going to gush when I want to gush (I feel he deserves it too since I was kinda mean to him in the early days on this blog).  Anyway, like this morning.  I showed him his pants and pointed at his legs and told him I needed to put his pants on.  He came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder and lifted his leg up one at a time.  He is so freaking cute, and so freaking smart.

The thing I am so excited about, is that he cleans up!  Yes, I am managing two OCD boys!  I am so PROUD!  I have been trying for weeks now.  We dump out the bucket of shapes all over the floor, which he loves.  Then I sing the clean up song and throw all the pieces back in, making loud noises as they clank in the bucket.  He loves it.  Normally he would just watch me do this and before I could get all the pieces back he would dump it out again.  Recently, however, he is onto the whole process, and he picks up the pieces and puts them back himself.  AWESOME.  Huge smiles for me when he gets one back in the bucket.  I love it.  Then he dumps them out again.  Oh well.

He really is adorable.  He is super smart, a great eater, and a chatterbox as well.  He likes to repeat and yell some garble that the whole family has now taken a shine to and repeats back at him.  He claps, but on random occasions, still no waving though.  Neither of my boys have done that.  If James would blow kisses I think I would melt.

James is certainly growing to be a very import an, very awesome, very stubborn and very handsome part of our family.  He loves us all, but loves no one like he loves his big brother Joel.  I can't wait to see how he will grow this year.  What will his first clear words be?  Who will be his favorite stuffed animal?  And how much he will enjoy the lake this summer.  We have an awesome year ahead.

In Memory of Jolene Porter-Short.  Jolene passed away yesterday, after a battle with cancer.  She was a lactation consultant at Exeter Hospital.  She was an awesome person and I cannot say enough about what she did for my family.  Neither of my boys would have been breastfed if it wasn't for her, and that is no exaggeration.  I am sending prayers to her family, but most of all I am so sad for all the new Moms that will not have her patience, guidance, and humor to help them along.