A Letter to Gideon at One Year Old

Dear Gideon,

Your letters will be shorter and your blog posts and pictures will be fewer, but that doesn't mean you are any less loved.

All it means, is that instead of getting the camera out, I'm just adoring you longer.  Instead of writing everything down, I'm snuggling up tighter.  The moments of the day are full right now and so often you play contentedly on the floor by yourself or wander from room to room exploring your world on your own.  You are shuffled from car seat to stroller to car seat to shopping cart countless times a day because you were born into this busy family with busy brothers and life is moving too fast to sit down and play pat-a-cake.

Or is it?

A few nights ago, I was giving you a bath, one of the items on the get everyone ready for bed to-do list.  You were washed and clean and I reached over to drain the water so that we could move on to the pjs, the bottle, the bedtime stories, and then repeat the same for your brothers before I could finally collapse in a heap on the couch with whatever treat I felt I deserved that night--ice cream? chips? wine?

But I stopped short.  You were having so much fun and I didn't want you to have to get out and I didn't want to have to stop watching you.  So I sat back on the toilet beside the tub and I watched you.  You love the way the plastic yellow cup sounds when banged against the side of the tub.  You love the splash of your little hands in the water--the feeling, the sound, the way little drops of water fly up into your face.  You love to occasionally dunk your whole head forward and take a little face dip, a little sip of the water.  You get up on your knees because you can now and you crawl around in there and sometimes that's all you do, just crawl and flip, sit and laugh and splash and smile at me.

Every time I pick you up, I am reminded that I should do it more often.  You snuggle your dark hair into my shoulder and sometimes you try to bite me.  You are so sweet I want to eat you up too.

I will not be sad as you grow up because every new thing you do is so much fun, but I hope I do have some memory of the way your face feels warm on my neck, the way you climb me with your legs when you don't want me to put you down and the way the feeling of bath water through your fingertips was the absolute highlight of your world...and mine.

I love you.

Love,

Mommy