1 Years Old Today!!

Dear Dean,

Happy birthday! You are one year old today, and it’s been one of

the most joyful, exhausting, funniest and fullest year of our lives. I’m so thankful for you. I’m so glad God chose to give us you, that he picked you just as you are and blessed us with your little life. You are perfect for your dad and me.

I love the way you look, my beautiful little blonde haired, blue-eyed baby, a perfect image of your dad. I thought it was too much to ask for that you would have these crystal-clear baby blues, but here you are, your precious little ears and crazy hair making you perfectly imperfect. When I see you, I see your dad, but more than that, you just look like family to me. You look like you came from me, pulled from my past, this perfect culmination of everything that’s ever happened to bring you to this point.

I love your laid-back, easy-going, silly personality (something I am learning to do myself). I love the way you smile with a wide-open mouth, laughing silently or giggling audibly. The way you love to be swung around, thrown in the air or flipped upside down. The way you reach out to touch everything. The way you love to offer us your food, your toys or the little scraps of paper you find on the ground. I love the way you wake up in the mornings with wild hair, standing at your crib, pacifier at your feet, crying for me. I love the crooked little mouth and long face you make when you cry, how your cry affects me.

If there was an award for the ‘Best Hugger’, you would win hands-down. I can’t get enough of your baby bear hugs and open mouth kisses that you give me every morning and throughout the day. I hope you never lose the ability to show affection so boundlessly. Your innocence and the love that you show everyone in this family is a blessing that I will never take for granted.  You are impossibly tender and loving. You hold on to me as though you’re trying to tell me just how much you love me.

I can’t imagine a world without you in it, Dean.  I have come to love you more intensely than I could have ever dreamed.

I hope that the upcoming year drags by.  I hope that you take your time learning how to walk.  I hope that you stay cuddly and soft.  Please take your time and stay my baby for just a bit longer, I can’t bear to have you grow up yet.

With a heart simply overflowing with love,

Mommy