365 Days ago

Yup, the baby is 1 year old today. A year! 365 days! Well, actually 366, it was a leap year. It took him a whole extra day to make it to his first birthday.

I thought for sure since he had that extra day and all that he would be my first child to be walking by his first birthday. For MONTHS now he's been pulling himself up to everything and standing up for seconds at time when he's too busy playing to realize he's standing. And I keep saying "he'll be walking any time now...." But no, he's officially 1 now and officially not walking.

But he does go up and down the stairs by himself, climb up onto and slide down off of beds by himself, and has 3 teeth. Well, he has two on the bottom and two on the top. But the two on the top are both only about half grown in, so they are only half teeth. So 2 full teeth and 2 half teeth equal 3 teeth, right?

Which is less teeth than either of his siblings on their first birthday. And less hair, too.

Here's the side by side by side comparison



Yes, just one year ago today Harrison first arrived on the scene. The smallest of my 3 babies, coming in at just 7 lbs. 8 oz. He was also the first of my children to come early, by exactly 1 week. He still put me through nearly 24 hours of labor though.

I started having contractions first thing in the morning on the 27th. In fact I asked Mike not to go to work that day because I was sure we'd have a baby in the next few hours.

He went to work anyway. And worked a full 8 hour day. And still no baby. But the contractions were still steady (although not close enough together to rush to the hospital) so we made packed a bag for the older kids and dropped them off at Grandma's. Then we went to Shopko to buy a car seat. Because even though my due date was only a week away we still hadn't bought a car seat. The contractions were getting closer and more uncomfortable at this point so here I am, walking around Shopko, and every 7-9 minutes I brace the shopping cart for a minute or so, and then go on with my shopping. We even stood at the discount movie rack for nearly half an hour picking out funny movies to watch the rest of the night to keep our minds off our impending doom.

But soon Shopko was closing and they were kicking us out. And the contractions still weren't QUITE close enough. Plus I had made the mistake twice before of going to the hospital too early so we turned and went home, much to my dismay.

So we sat in bed and watched two episodes of Scrubs (well, Mike watched Scrubs, I spent most the time in the bathroom or pacing the room because I couldn't get comfortable) and then half way through Becker I told him I couldn't stand it anymore and we HAD to go to the hospital now. (He really wanted to at least watch the end of Becker, but I said no.)

So on our way to the hospital at 11:30 pm I was pretty sure we wouldn't have a baby that day, but likely soon. Little did I know that it was still 9 hours away!!!! 9 LONG nothing on TV (no VCR in our room!!!!) late at night, really tired, shaking, puking, frustrating hours later.

But those hours did pass, and by 9:00 we had our new baby boy.



My how time flies!



The good news is that despite my earlier fears there were indeed presents, thanks to a combination of my own stupidity and my sister's extreme willingness to be my personal concierge.



Of course, most of them where small boxes of cereal...but a present is a present, right?

He even got a cake!



And decorations!



So now he can't ever complain about being the neglected 3rd child.

Happy Birthday, my baby! No matter how old you get, you will always be my baby.