My first birthday.

Today is Babe's 1st birthday. We spent the day opening presents (her favorite have been Backyardagain clip-ons, an activity cube, blocks, and a Vera Bradley purse), taking many pictures, and just remembering how she got here and what a wonderful year of milestones we've had with her.

Babe arrived in this world via cesarean birth. While I had general anesthesia (long story, but all was well, believe me, all was very well as I slept and felt no pain after 15 hours of the hardest work I've ever done in my life) I was not awake when she first came out, but once I was awake the first person I saw was Babe. She was tiny and swaddled and had been placed at my breast to nurse by our doula. She was gorgeous. DH and I spent the rest of the night and early morning looking at her, listening to her cries, and trying to fill out endless paperwork about her name. Those first few days are a blurr to me now. I know that I went home after 3 days, she slept no longer than 30 minutes at a time, sometimes 40 or 45, and she had a scream that could peel paint off of walls. I remember charting everything, from pees to poohs, to how long she cried, to which breast she nursed on, to pimples on her nose. We barely left the house, except for a doctor's visit to check her weight and height. It was a wonderful week. Those weeks moved into months and many other special things, the first time she tried holding her head up by herself (about 3 weeks), the first time she smiled and cooed at us-about 2 months (randomly she did it at 2 1/2 days), the first time she sat up by herself Thanksgiving, her first visit to see Santa, moving into our first house, the first cruising steps (9 months), crawling (11 months-2 weeks ago to be exact), and now her first birthday.

I honestly don't know where the year has gone, while not every moment has been spectacular, some have been down right scary (her first big fever in the middle of the night, her first temper tantrum in a store-over hot dog buns) and some have been sad (the loss of her great-grandma at 6 weeks old), every moment has propelled me towards this: there hasn't been anything greater to happen to me than this, being a mother.