One.

My littlest firecracker turns one today.

1. One. Uno. ONE.

Sigh.

As Luke toddles around with his new bright blue helmet and tuff of red hair sprouting out of the top I think to myself "where has the year gone?" "he doesn't even resemble the newborn I brought home" "before I know it he'll be married with kids of his own!"

How did he go from this....

...to this!?

Must have something to do with feeding him or something...

If I ponder on how fast time flies the bittersweet emotions get the best of me. Ahhh it's that combination of pride and anticipation mixed with longing for things to stay the same and time to freeze.

A year ago I pushed this little body out into the world and felt that instant connection. My heart grew immediately to welcome this life and I knew that no matter if we are blessed with one more child or two more or 10 more (not.happening.) that my heart would easily expand to welcome whatever blessing God bestows on us. Love has no maximum capacity and this little boy has brought so much love and joy to our family.

Happy 1st Birthday Lukey!!!

++++++++++++++++++++++

My mind shifts to my oldest son who is now 4 1/2 and I realize I have ONE more year before he's off to school. I'm flooded with all of the things I want to teach him in the next year. Not only educational things but social, emotional, moral things.

It would be so easy for me to create a list (I love lists...a lot) of what I want to cram in before Fall 2013.

It would be so easy to exhaust myself and Nathan if I tried to cover everything that he would have learned in preschool. To make sure that when he starts kindergarten he won't be behind the other students that got a year or two of preschool.

It would be so easy to feel like a failure if I didn't complete all of my "prekindergarten tasks".

It would be so easy to feel like a failure because just a year ago he was actually reading words but now, in the chaos of adding another sibling, he doesn't even know all of his letters. We stopped working with him and he forgot a lot of things. We're working with him again and he's slowly learning. He has about 8 more letters to learn. He's smart. We talk about evaporation and the moon reflecting the sun's light and all sorts of things but we have a lot of "school" type things to work on.

And it would be so easy to strive to be that perfect parent even while knowing no such thing exists.

Then I think about last night when Marcus was putting Nathan to bed. I was outside working on landscaping and Nathan came up to me and said "Night Mommy" and hugged me while I tried not to get dirt from my gardening gloves on his PJ's. I asked for a kiss and he said "no" smiled and walked away.

He usually likes to tease me and pretend he won't hug or kiss me but then always turns back and says "just kidding, of course you can have a kiss!"

But this time he kept walking away.

His little body was almost completely inside the door and he wasn't even turning around. I thought "this is it, he's growing up"

At the very last second he whirled around and ran full force into my arms and said "Mommy! You can have a kiss!"

I leaned down and kiss him goodnight and said sweet dreams as he ran off. I thought to myself "yeah, he's still little" and "I must be doing something right."

I savor this time when he's little enough to kiss his mommy and he still runs to me when I pick him up from daycare. He's still little enough to carry to bed if he falls asleep on the couch. He's still little enough to wear footy pajamas.

So during this last year. The one year before kindergarten. I'm going to try my best to savor his littleness and not be consumed with preparing him for kindergarten. Because where ever he goes- God will be with him. And that's really all that he needs.