My dear sweet Roarkie,

You turned a year old at the end of last month, and oh my gosh, I can’t believe it’s already been a year!  It’s seems like just yesterday I was lugging around this gigantic belly and knocking into things as I waddled around our house. 

Happy Birthday, angel!  To celebrate this momentous occasion, we let you stuff your face with birthday cake in front of all your family, and I do mean, STUFF.  Well, at first you just poked at the cake with your little sausage-like fingers and tasted them ever so slowly.  But you quickly realized that this wasn’t the most efficient way to get the sugar in your mouth.  So within a couple of minutes, you just picked up the entire cake and crammed it into the lower half of your face.  By the end, you were covered from head to toe in icing, and I was thankful that we decided to have this spectacle at your grandparents’ house as opposed to a restaurant like we did for your sister.

If there is one thing that I have learned this year, the thing most obvious that you insist on pointing out with every new milestone, it’s that you are not your sister.  I must admit this has thrown me for a loop once or twice because she has always been my gauge by which I measure other babies.  And before you start accusing me of playing favorites and loving her more, it’s not because she was a perfect baby, and therefore, dearest to my heart.  But she was what I knew, the only experience I had with infants until you came along.  So when you didn’t cut your first tooth until you were eight months old, I thought it was odd.  I mean, Edie had four teeth by the time she was four months old and spent most of her infancy looking like  a chipmunk. You, on the other hand, had no teeth and spent most of your first year smiling like a toothless old man.

Also Edie never had a definable first word because once she caught on that words had meanings she began imitating lots of sounds, but not you.  Your word is “Uh Oh,” and you know exactly when to use it.  You drop your paci, “Uh Oh.”  You fall down, “Uh Oh.”  You hurl your juice cup across the kitchen, “Uh Oh.”  But that’s it.  No other words.  I’ve been trying to get you to say “Mama” for months now, and you couldn’t be any less interested.  You have absolutely no need for any other words at the moment, I guess because “Uh Oh” seems to suffice in most of the situations you find yourself in.

Gosh, you are into everything!  It wasn’t until you came along that I had to put locks on my kitchen cabinets.  You love to open a drawer, any drawer, and pull out all of it’s contents onto the floor.   This is really one of the more annoying things that you do, and as payback, someday I plan to tell your highschool buddies about finding all my underwear strewn about the house because of your curiosity as a baby.   And don’t get me started on your love for remote controls!  Like a moth is drawn to a bug zapper, you, my son, cannot resist a remote control.  If I try to hold you in my lap while sitting on the sofa,  you begin climbing me like I’m a mountain that’s separating you from your precious.  And when we take it out of your hands and tell you “No”, you throw yourself on the floor like we are the meanest parents ever because we are denying you the fun of pushing buttons and hearing the volume change on the TV. 

Me & Roark

But for the most part, you are a very easy-going baby, and mainly only fuss because you want one thing:  yo’ mama.  All I have to do is pick you up, and you stop crying instantly (which I think is just proof that you love me the most in the whole wide world, and therefore, I win).  But there are times when I won’t pick you up, and you act like a baby, standing at my feet, holding my legs, and pleading for me to hold you.  Although it can be irritating in the moment, I want to remember there once was a time that to please you, all I had to do was hold you in my arms.

You are such a joy.    Over this past year, I have heard countless times, ”You are going to love having a son,” and I now believe it.  That’s what you did.  You made me want a little boy.  You made me see how special having a son can be.  For as long as I can remember, I wanted a house full of girls.  I don’t know why, but that’s just what I always envisioned.   And even though I understand simple statistics, I was still surprised when I heard the words, “It’s a boy!”  I just could not picture myself with a son, and yet, there you were.  But over this past year, I have fallen so deeply in love with you that now, I can’t imagine my life without one. 

I have been given the most awesome gift a mother can have, a daughter and a son.  I now get to experience life through both of your eyes, see the world through different viewpoints that otherwise I would have missed. You did that for me, Roark, and I will forever be grateful for it.

Love,

Mommy