One Year Old

My youngest is one year old today! It's so amazing how quickly that first year passes, and yet how it seems to drag on forever while you're in the midst of it.

This boy seemed to take forever to give us that first smile--he was something like 6 or 7 weeks old before we got one. But he hasn't stopped since! He loves his brothers and sisters, and is even starting to warm up to Daddy. Started sitting up at 6 months, then crawled a week or two later. Has been busy working on forming new consonant sounds since then, we're up to 'mama', 'dada', 'baba', and a couple of others that Ican't remember right now. :)

He took his first steps about two weeks ago, and is now taking two or three at a time before dropping to the floor to crawl the rest of the way to where he wants to go. His 7th tooth popped through this week (bottom far left), and he's loving his sippy cup more and more each day.

He's a snuggler and loves to hug and kiss. He'll pucker up and make a kissy sound, too, which is just adorable! He waved bye-bye to some friends last night, which we've been working on for a while, but his timing has been off--you know, he'll wait until everyone has actually left, then wave. :)

Having eight kids has been a challenge, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how everyone just fits in our family. The Lord has put personalities and temperaments together in such a way that every day has it's good moments and bad, conflicts and cooperation, but we all love each other and are happy to have such a wonderful family.

We're so thankful to have this happy little guy as a part of that. He is such a joy to all of us!