Today you turn one which means you have been part of our family for a whole year. I can't believe it has been a year since you surprised us with your early arrival and with the fact that you were a boy. I will never forget that moment, anticipating the announcement of "it's a girl" only to hear daddy say "it's a BOY!" I was grinning from ear to ear and have continued to smile everyday watching you grow. Plus you haven't stopped smiling since the day you started and your smile is quite contagious. You truly are the happiest little guy I have ever seen. So easy going, adventurous, and genuinely happy. You hardly make a peep about being unhappy and if you do it only lasts a second. You have made your sisters laugh and smile even more, and they absolutely adore you. And boy can they get you going. Madi loves to play tickle monster with you. And Emma just loves to touch you, pat you, kiss you, hug you, carry you, and be around you. Don't worry though, daddy has been training you and teaching you how to deal with your sisters someday. He has you practicing rights and lefts. And you have already shown us you are a master of the bob and weave move. You love your daddy training sessions. Although I don't see boxing as your sport. I am hoping for basketball or football, maybe some golf with daddy.
At one you can say mama, dada, uh oh, and ball. You love balls! You would be perfectly happy if you only had a ball to play with all day long. Doesn't matter what size, you love to throw it and chase it all over the house. You have 8 teeth and are feeding yourself finger foods pretty well. You will try just about anything and your tastes change from day to day. You are also a total water baby like Madi. You love to splash, love the bath, love Papi's water bowl, love swimming pools, love the tide pools on the beach although not to fond of the ocean waves. You have tried a couple times to just crawl off the edge into a pool and weren't too happy when I stopped you. You are a great and quite fast crawler and do a great bear crawl, you don't like to sit still much. Thankfully, for me at least, you haven't figured out walking yet. You have shown us that you can stand but haven't attempted any steps. To be honest, this makes me quite happy as I am not ready to start chasing you. You are hard enough to chase on your hands and knees. And you love a good game of chase especially up the stairs. And speaking of stairs, you are a climber. Once you figured out the stairs, you quickly learned to climb other things like the baby gate blocking the stairs. Only took you a couple weeks to figure out that you could scale it and make your way upstairs. All with the biggest grin on your face.
You do everything with the biggest grin on your face! My hope for you is that you smile that big and that hard every day for the rest of your life.
I can't wait to see what this next year brings, how much you grow and learn and how much more you can smile.
I love you with all my heart Benjamin James,
Mommy
