1 Year

Today was Chase's 1 year birthday...

I can't believe how fast it has gone by.  It feels like we were in the hospital with him just yesterday.  I feel so lucky to be Chase's mom - there really isn't anything that can compare to a mother's love.

Some of my favorite things about the last year:

- Delivery itself - it was so exciting and amazing

- Holding Chase for the very first time

- Chase's tiny hands and feet

- The way Chase buries his face against me when he is giving me hugs

- Chase's open mouth kisses

- The Yum Yum dance

- Checking on Chase while he sleeps

- All of the firsts - rolling, crawling, walking, words, waving, etc.

- Naked baby after a bath

- Chase's soft fluffy hair

- The way babies smell

- How Chase loves tags more than anything else

- Watching my parents with Chase

- Pretty much just about everything!

I can't imagine going back to life before Chase....

What a Cute Birthday Boy

This weekend was Chase's 1st birthday party. His Grammy hosted the party and it was a huge success. He got a ton of amazing gifts including a convertible, a hand painted wagon, lots of books, a ball toy, balloons, bubbles, an ATV, and a penguin pillow. He is such a spoiled kid.

The funniest thing is that I think Chase takes after Boris when it comes to cleanliness. We could not get him to dive into the cake! Grammy had to break it into pieces for him and even then he stayed pretty clean.

Check out the rest of Chase's birthday pictures at his website.

Growing Up Too Fast

My son is definitely growing up way too fast...

Chase has done the most amazing things recently.  In the last two weeks he has learned to wave bye, crawl, pull up, feed himself, drink out of a sippy cup, and take steps if you hold his hands.  I am shocked at how fast this wave of new activity has come.  I figured that things would be much more gradual.  It is hard because on one hand it is so exciting and I can't wait for the next new thing but on the other hand it makes me sad because time is going by so fast.  Pretty soon Chase will be a toddler and won't be a baby anymore.  I don't think I am ready to give up having a "baby".

Here are some recent pictures of kiddo.

Trouble - Here we come!

Chase, my adorable 8 month old boy, finally started crawling today!  He has been rocking on all fours and scooting about for awhile now but today was the first day he did an official crawl.  He only made it a few feet but he did it multiple times so I think it counts.  We'll see what he can do tomorrow when he isn't as tired.  I am so excited!!!

This opens a whole new world of trouble for us.  Pretty soon he is going to be opening drawers and cabinets and pulling up on things.  We have already started to childproof, which involved attempted purchases / installations of 4 or 5 baby gates before we found the correct one, many drawer clips, not all of which have been installed and a few of which don't work due to installation error, and door locks, which work amazingly well.  I'm sure all of this effort won't keep Chase out of everything and he will still manage to get into trouble or bonk his head on a few sharp corners but I guess that comes with childhood.

I'll be curious to see what the toddler age does to my perfect well behaved baby, who up to this point has only cried for more then 15 minutes 4 times in his life (I'm sure you don't believe me but I swear he is really that good).  Tonight he insisted on being rocked to sleep (which we never do) so I hope we aren't leaving our angel child phase and moving into a devil child phase but only time will tell.

I guess the question of the day is - Do perfect babies make perfect toddlers or are Boris and I in for a world of hurt?