I Heart Blake

Today is Blake's birthday. His first birthday. I love him. He's so cute and fat, I can't stand it. I'm surprised that I haven't taken a bite out of him this year. It's hard to say exactly why I am so in love with him, and since this is a blog, I will now discuss, at length, possible reasons for my in"fat"uation with Blake

1. He's the Baby

Blake is our last biological child and possibly our last baby all together, so knowing that I will not have a baby of my own to play with makes this time so much more special. And the other benefit of him being the baby is that I am not as concerned that I am going to ruin him with any parenting mistake I make, so it's I'm a little more laid back. Little, by the way, is relative.

2. He was Hard to Get

Now this can come in handy in dating scenarios, but when attempting to complete your family, it is not fun. After two miscarriages in the second trimester, I wasn't sure that I could or would want to go through another pregnancy. But then one of my fellow nurses, Carol, who is a yenta (she would agree), told me that I was going to have another baby and that it would be a boy. i told her that that is exactly what I wanted, but my track record was less than 50% at that point. But she was right, and she reminded me throughout the pregnancy. She even wanted me to give him a Jewish name. I tried with the name Nathan, but Kevin won with his choice and he is much more a Blake than a Nathan.

3. Blank

When we first named him in the hospital, Olivia was very confused as to why we would choose a name for something your eyes do (blink). But then she realized there was a long a sound in it and has since called him Blank. I don't want to correct her and in fact call him Blank from time to time JFF.

4. Babbling

Does it get any cuter than a baby babbling. Although his first word was "ball" followed by "dada" and I get the occasional "mama", I love when he just bababababas, or mamammamammamas. He even sings. I'm not joking (or as Olivia puts it "choking"). During singing time in Primary you can here him babababaing in a sing song voice that he doesn't do when he's talking.

5. Athleticism

He's a natural athlete. I'm not just saying that because he's my boy. He throws a ball, crawls at record speed (he's too fat to walk), and loves my hand weights and tries to lift them. It's when he does that that I get after him that he's just like his father trying to lift more weight than he should. This morning his was batting around a eyeshadow container like a hockey puck. He has good wrestling moves. He had issues with his, um, diaper area, that his doctor told me to attend to it every time I changed his diaper, and when I did he would wrap both his legs around my arm to stop me.

6. Class Clown

Since he is the baby, typical birth order studies say that he will love being the center of attention and/ or the class clown. This is him. He loves to make a squinty face at the dinner table to make everyone laugh. He can be very silly.

7. Big Boy

He's going to be a large boy. Not fat though. He will skinny when he starts running, so I have no worries there, but he will be big, bigger than Dillan. His stats are bigger than Dillan was at his age, so I'm going to have another strapping young man on my hands in a few years.

I love Blake. I'm so glad that he's in our family. He makes our little family complete. I cannot express my baby love for him enough. I don't know if other moms go through this with the more children they have, or if I am just very blessed to have such a great boy, but I love this boy!