I am fairly sure I say this with every birthday that you and Renee and Cameron hit but I can NOT fathom the idea that you are one. It seems like a week or two ago that I was beside myself begging you to PLEASE hurry up and evict yourself from the confines of my uterus.
You weren’t in any hurry to get here. You were wedged in there all nice and comfy in my belly with your face pointing up. Every night when I laid down to try to sleep, you would hit me with contraction after contraction after contraction all night long and just around 4AM, when I’d already lost an entire night’s sleep, you would stop. I’d get up for work the next morning exhausted and completely certain that I would be pregnant for the rest of my life.
I just wanted to meet you. I just wanted to kiss your soft little forehead and tell you what your name is. I wanted to rub your little fingers and count your little toes and promise that I will always be there for you.
And, after you finally showed up, I did just that. I spent my entire maternity leave with you curled up on my chest breathing in your scent and enjoying your warmth. We watched a lot of movies and shopped on the iPad and watched Food Network. I will never forget how happy and calm I was and how over the moon I was to have you in our lives. We kept each other warm all winter and I enjoyed every single minute of it. I called you Baby Love and Sweetest and Mr. Love and delighted in every single smile and every single feeding and every single nap.
I went back to work when you were 12 weeks old and since then time has flown by faster than I’d like. The days are filled with the hustle and bustle of a family of five with three kids under five. There’s dance class and homework and school programs and grocery shopping and endless amounts of laundry. There’s cooking three different meals for three different demographics at least three times a day and the endless amount of dishes that go along with that. I try to take the time to notice how you eat your food and what you are interested in playing with and I remind myself daily not to wish these days away because I know I will miss you being so little.
You had a busy year. You learned to roll over and sit up and crawl and eat. You flew across the country on vacation and were a superstar baby traveler. In the last week, you have learned how to walk. There is nothing in this world that I love more than your little Frankenstein walk and how you look so determined as you stumble down the hallway. You love markers and shaking your little booty to music. You love the remote control. Not the back-up remote control or the toy remote control but the remote control that actually changes the TV station and leaves your brother and sister yelling ISAAC! constantly.
You love your brother and sister. You love it when they talk to you and play with you. Renee gives you snacks when we are riding in the car and Cameron is constantly hugging and kissing you. You screech with joy when they are running around the house like lunatics because you just can’t wait to chase after them.
Auntie Jen and Auntie Annie got you a little chair with your name on it for your birthday, a gift that each of the cousins got on their first birthdays. You were THRILLED to have your own chair and I could tell by your excitement that you knew it was yours. You knew that they wouldn’t be able to tell you get off of theirs anymore. You climbed on that chair and smiled like a ham for much of the week following your birthday party and I swear to you, every time I look at the chair for the next few years, I will smile and remember your joy. It was that good.
You are a mommy’s boy to the core. You cry when I walk out of the room. Lately, you start crying as I am standing up from my chair. On the nights when I take Renee to dance and leave you with dad, you crawl to the door to the garage where you know I went and you scream. You smile at dad but push his arms away if he tries to take you from me. I did this to you. Part of it is because of my insistence on nursing you (and yes, you are still nursing, I am not sure you will ever stop nursing) and part of this is because your dad is not tuned in to the frequency of your cries and unless I throw a pillow at his head, he doesn’t get up in the night to calm you. It’s just you and me baby, from 4AM until the sun comes up, snuggling in our big red glider. You sleep fairly hard until 4AM or so and then you’re up, either because your teeth are hurting you or because you have farts trapped in your belly.
You are the gassiest baby I’ve ever met. I avoided egg and dairy and soy for most of your life trying to make that gas better. I’ve started eating recently and given you cheese and eggs and we have seen little to no change so I don’t think it was ever what I was eating but just the way you were made. You fart as loud as your dad and often, like every few minutes. It is hilarious.
You have six teeth and have made me pay with precious hours of lost sleep for each and every one of them. You got four of them in the last few weeks and you were not pleased about it. You did not let me put you down day or night for weeks. Then, they popped through and you went directly back to sweet little Isaac. Feisty and opinionated, yes, but there is a lot of sweetness mixed in there too.
Your favorite words are NO NO, Mama and BYE! I love how you say BYE to everyone whether they are coming or going. There are a lot of other words mixed in but those are the words that I am certain that you are using purposefully in context.
I call you Zilly as often as I call you Isaac. You will turn your head if I say “Zilly, no, no” and you’ll smile and shout “NO NO” and then you’ll just go right on doing whatever you want. I think you might think that your name is Zilly. I’m sorry for that. But, your dad calls you The Dawg and will go so far as to send me text messages that say “I’ll pick The Dawg up today” so I tell myself that my nickname is better than his? I hope you think so.
In any case, we are both so glad we decided to have a third. You are the perfect caboose to our train, the perfect end to my days as a mommy to a tiny little baby. Here’s to toddlerhood and here’s to the next couple of decades of watching you grow.
I love you, my Zilly, my Isaac, my littlest, my sweet little baby boy,
Mama
