How quickly a year goes by...

Tonight is the eve of my last baby's 1st birthday and it is so hard to believe that a year ago today I was trying to make myself get a little sleep, but was too excited to know that I would be meeting my baby very soon. I was induced at 7am on the 25th, so the night before was impossible for me to get any sleep at all! I was much to anxious to get to the hospital and get the show on the road. After a long (or long to me) and hard labor, Hayden Thomas made his arrival at 4:40pm on Friday, September 25, 2009. It was so fun not finding out the gender and having that anticipation and surprise at the end of a long, hard day. It was so fun for Steve to look at me, with tears in his eyes, and proudly announce that it was a boy, much to our surprise because for whatever reason we both thought it was going to be a girl. It was so fun getting to pick out a name right then & there because we weren't sure about a boy's name until that very moment when we first saw him. It was so special to me to get to give my baby boy his middle name after his great-grandfather, my Pop, whom he hasn't met on this earth, but I know that he met in heaven before he was here. And to top it all off, was seeing the look of awe & amazement on Abigail & Mitchell's faces' when they walked into the hospital room to meet their new brother. They were the first ones we had back into the room and Abigail knew before we even told her that it was a brother, she just sensed it and knew she had another little brother. They loved him from the second they saw him, all wrapped up in his blankie and taking in his new world. What a beautiful and wonderful day that was!

Tomorrow we will celebrate Hayden's big first birthday with our friends and family at our house in the backyard. Finally, we have a child with a birthday in the warm weather months so that we can have an outdoor party! I know he won't understand what all the commotion and craziness is about, but we will and we will celebrate all day long. He is such a character and is really getting his own personality, which I hate to admit is actually a lot like mine, impatient and has a little temper! But I love watching him develop and finding his own way and place in our family. What a perfect and amazing blessing he has been in our life!