My Baby's 1!

It seems whenever a birthday goes by we reflect on how fast the year went by, especially when it is a first birthday. I have to admit that I don’t really feel the past year went by fast, I just can’t get over the changes that happened in the past year.

A year ago our baby boy entered this world and our family and what a different family life it was then. I remember very little about his first two months of life, except the few things that pictures and his sporadic journal help me to remember. It’s hard to believe he then spent 9 weeks away from home with only occasional visits. Looking back I remember that guilty feeling at the time that I didn’t truly miss my boy like a mother should when she’s away from her baby for an extended time, that I didn’t worry all day about how he was fairing, how he in some ways just got forgotten, how when I did see him it didn’t even feel like he was mine, I just felt like a babysitter. It was sad, it hurt, but it was true. And then the time it took to rebond with a child who I had never had extensive time to spend with before. And now I look at my special little boy and the bond I feel for him and realize that although I missed the first part of his life, you would never know it now.

Today we took some time out to celebrate our little man’s first birthday. He of course had no idea what was going on but we still had a nice day of cake, presents and relaxation with a few friends this afternoon.

I made sure the icing was Matthew-proof, as he's not allowed to eat the actual cake ... not that he would want to anyways. I was actually surprise to see him try take a bit out of the icing/cake. I gave him a bit of icing to taste afterwards, but typcial Matthew-style, he promptly threw that on the ground, guess it just looked better on the actual cake












I'm suppose to do what with this??
The kids having fun with the pool ... always more fun when there's others to play with.













You all know how Matthew gave us a run for our money over the past year with all his little peculiarities that just didn’t add up to anything specific. I am happy to report that we have now gone for one month without any vomits … yaaaaahhh!!! At the same time he’s also gone for one month without any sickness … yaaaaahhhh!!! Seeing a connection here? Again guess work but we wonder how much he just has a crappy system that can’t handle being down and begins to vomit easily … for a prolonged time (usually a couple weeks). This would explain the continual intermittent vomiting over the winter as he was continuously sick with one thing or another. I didn’t hear anything back on the immune blood work we did, so I’m assuming all is good there. We have no idea where the ears are at right now, I gave up on running back and forth to the doctor when last time she said they were looking pretty good even though he was extremely cranky still. We’ve had a couple good streaks where he’s quite happy and content and plays so well I wonder if I have the right child. We’re just going through one of those stages and I just can’t get over how much of a difference in makes in the house to have a happy boy. I’m less stressed and irritated and I notice it on the kids too and we all get along so much better. Since I don’t have confidence yet that he’s made it thru his crankiness I remind myself to just enjoy it while it lasts. For now he appears healthy and growing and so we focus on that instead of his eating habits and keep praying for less crankiness all the time.

The eating battle hasn’t changed, excepted maybe that I’ve just relaxed more and attempt to keep the “not stressed” attitude. Mostly I’ve accept this, I offer him food, give him options and don’t stress about it. Every now and then I just get so frustrated with him when I know he’s starving but he refuses to eat. I got fed up with his restricted diet one day and reintroduced rice. We did have some down time where we wondered how bright that was when he started having painful cries and diarrhea … but I didn’t give up too quickly and a week later he seemed to settle and ever since then all has been good and he seems to tolerate the rice fine. I did this so that we’d be able to introduce more finger foods as the only thing that met his diet restrictions before that was potato chips …rather unhealthy, but considering how much he eats at once not too concerning. I thought this would open up the door to Gluten Free Products (which we have in the house for Rebecca anyways) but quickly realized that it wasn’t that simple since many of them have either milk, soy or corn … but we have found a few things.

But to look at our boy you would never guess he’s the slightest bit different then the average kid. He’s got thick and chunky legs and lots of flab on that bum. He’s as energetic as can be and it’s not uncommon to hear a remark of surprise at the speed at which he can crawl. It scares me to watch him play and so I mostly try to turn my head the other way so as not to stunt his playing style. He can climb up the slide in our backyard at a remarkable speed, but often forgets that there’s a ledge there and he has to watch where he sits or he falls. He doesn’t catch on very quickly to these things and has to make the same mistakes repeatedly without making any progress in the correct direction. I got the rocking horse out the other day for him to learn to ride. His idea of riding it is to sit on his knees and the less holding on the better. I’m reminded that he’s a true boy, not the laid-back energy conserving boy James was. It is a joy to see him so active, I just wish he could learn how to sit still long enough to actually play with a toy or two.

I will never forget how proud James was of his little brother Matthew. He only had a short time with his baby brother but he definitely developed a strong bond to watch over and protect this little baby.