My baby turns 1

Still in denial about this one, but tomorrow (Cinco de Mayo), my baby John turns into a one-year-old boy. He is the most delightful little guy. Seriously. This baby is nothing if not good-natured. He's a smart fellow, too. Lately, there have been several demonstrations that show me he understands everything that is being said. He follows verbal instruction to chase after a brother or sister (favorite activity), and yesterday he took great offense when he offered a goldfish to a friend of mine, and she replied in a very sweet, upbeat tone that she didn't like goldfish even as she accepted the offering. He was totally distraught, so he must have understood the words.

John is a great stander. He excels at getting to a standing position without the aid of any furniture to pull up on. It still thrills me to watch. He likes to say "uh-oh", is a SUPERB morning snuggler, loves his mom, loves his dad, loves his big brother, loves his big sister, enjoys a good chase, thrills at a round of wrestling, crawls around with a container of spices in each hand that he swipes from the pantry while I make dinner, enjoys going on walks or runs in the stroller, only complains if he is tired or hungry, grunts emphatically (instead of screaming) when he wants more or needs help because he has stranded himself on an upper floor by climbing up the stairs, and really likes unloading the dishwasher one utensil at a time. Oh, and he likes to eat dirt (or so we assume since he is often found getting into the potted plants).

To celebrate this little man, we started tonight. The missionaries came over for dinner, helped us sing to John-John, and cheered with us when he blew out his tank candle all by himself. We were feeling a little caked-out after our string of birthdays, so we got a little creative with dessert. Keeping in mind John's affinity for eating dirt, we had mud (chocolate pudding) and dirt (crushed oreos) with gummy worms as our treat.

John thought this worked quite nicely as a birthday treat, as evidenced by the photos...




After dinner and a bubble bath in the kitchen sink, he was back to making a mess of the real dirt.



With this third baby, those messes that used to be so stressful now strike me as being funny. Might have something to do with the grin this little lad can muster. We love you, Johnny!


And...the sink bath photo, requested and provided by Adam...just so John knows who to blame later in life when he reads this post. :0)