I come before you today, humbled by the fact that I have a one year old son.

The journey to parenthood was hard.

The journey to the one year mark was hard.

Parenting without parents is hard.

But being Liam’s mommy? One of the easiest things I’ve ever done.

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Pick Up and Go!: Most recently, he’s not just walking, but can pick himself up from the floor without needing assistance. Throughout this first year, I’ve been careful to avoid announcing milestones until I REALLY hear or see something. Once doesn’t count. He needs to do it with intention and purpose. I saw him get up on his own once before, but just before his birthday, he started getting up consistently – and just like that, we were done crawling!

Books a Million: As an English teacher, there aren’t words to express how happy it makes me when my son goes to grab a book and crawl into my lap to read it. He is even turning pages! Not at the right time or the right amount but at 12 months old, and for a kid who doesn’t sit still for anything, I’ll take what I can get, ok?! 😂 He isn’t allowed near paper books and he’s destroyed a bunch of board books BUT we’re reading and it’s amazing. His consistent favorite is Five Silly Monkeys (which ripped and Superdad repaired!). 

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Adapting: Shane has been traveling for work more often lately and in November worked in Columbus for five days. Our parenting is so fluidly connected that I was pretty freaked out at the idea of being a “single parent” for that amount of time. Thankfully, Auntie Emmy passes our house on her commute to work each day so she was around a lot to help out in the morning and after school. And the good news is that we all survived! (Including Daddy who both had a great time with his friends and missed his little family!)

First Thanksgiving: We also celebrated Liam’s first Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful day – our baby boy’s first and our first in our new home.

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First Harley Breakfast: One of our longest standing family traditions is the South East Harley Davidson Christmas open house on Black Friday. We’ve been going for almost thirty years so being able to take Liam was so, so special. I miss my parents so much, maybe the most on days like that especially because I know that both of my parents would have LOVED these moments with Liam – and Grandpa John would have been SO proud that he saw Santa!

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Sick, sick, sick: Right after Thanksgiving weekend, we all got sick in one form or another. Shane had body aches and a fever. Liam was diagnosed with double ear infections on the same night that I was diagnosed with strep. He’d been working hard on his one year molars too so he was a bit miserable for a while, the poor kid. We were both home from school for a couple of days that week, but thankfully were well enough by the following weekend because it was another one of our most favorite days of the year: Tree Day! This year, our Auntie Cindy came into town for some of our December activities, including our annual tree hunt. Again, if you’ve been fans of the blog – or our family – you know that our Christmas tree hunt is EXTRA special for us – and was even more so with Liam! (And Aunt Cindy, Uncle Papa, and Aunt Kathy who joined us this year – what a treat!)

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I’m so proud to be Liam’s mommy…when people have said how “smiley” or friendly or sweet he is, I melted with pride. When he was RUNNING by his first birthday, I exploded with pride. When he looks at me, into what feels like my soul, I am just a puddle of the melted, bursting pride, because never did I ever imagine what this love could feel like.

Saying that we wanted to have kids, or that we wanted a baby, and going through the struggle we did to get here, we really had no idea what we were saying. I certainly was not prepared to be the mom of a newborn. I’m probably still not really prepared, but what I am prepared to do is love this little boy with all of my heart and protect him as much as I can, and let him fly as much as I can, and show him as much as I can, and really just do the best that I can.

Year 2, here we go!