Happy Happy 1st Birthday Baby Will!!!!

I just canNOT believe that our little baby Will is ONE YEAR OLD today! To say the last year went by fast would be far too much of an understatement. It LITERALLY FLEW by. Isn't it amazing how many things a tiny baby learns to do in just one year? This little guy has been SO much fun and we just cannot imagine life without him in it. He is so funny and so smart. He knows exactly what he wants and usually figures out how to get it. He just loves his big brothers and I'm pretty sure he thinks he is just as old as they are. He is a Daddy's Boy through and through, but he does love to snuggle with Mommy occasionally too. He can sign the words: milk, bye-bye, night-night, and thank you. He LOVES monkeys and says the "ahh, ahh" part of the monkey sound, he hasn't gotten the beginning "ooh, ooh" part down quite yet. He also loves dogs and tries to make a doggy sound when he sees them. When we ask him what a "car" says he says "voom, voom" and it sounds pretty much just like that! It is so cute. He also blows kisses, which melts me EVERY single time. For his birthday today we all went into his room first thing singing "happy birthday to you!" He smiled when he first saw us, but then our singing freaked him out a little and he started to cry. We didn't know what was scarier, all of us coming toward him in his crib or our incredibly off-pitch singing - I'm sure it was a mixture of both. :) Poor little guy. He seemed to really love digging into his own little chocolate cake. Mark and I loved his look right at first, almost like he was saying "seriously guys, are you sure about this?" After his cake and a bath we let him play with his birthday presents which were a little dog stuffed animal that plays music from an mp3 player...which meant he kind of needed an mp3 player to go with it ... lucky for us, we already HAD a little mp3 player that I got on a great sale a few months ago kicking around so we threw that in - though I did ask myself more than once what kind of parent gives their one year old an mp3 player. Oh well, he LOVED it and I should have gotten video of him dancing. There are SOOOOOO many videos I need to take of this baby before he grows out of all of these adorable things he does. That is going on my priority list for the week. ANYWAY, he also got a "busy ball popper" which he just loved too - As a matter of fact ALL the boys loved it and played with it for a lot longer than should be normal for their ages since it was a baby toy and all. The ball popper was partly from Grandma Reading too because she sent him a darling birthday card and some birthday money a few weeks ago, she even called him today to wish him a happy birthday so she officially gets the prize for sending him his first birthday card and giving him his first telephone birthday greeting. After presents we all watched "America's Funniest Home Videos" and Will had fun fake laughing every time he heard one of us laugh. He topped off the night by shoving one of the ball popper balls in mom or dad's mouth and laughing hysterically when we blew them out at him. I guess for a one year old, the busy ball popper is fun but the human ball popper is even better! All in all, we had a great day with our little one year old. We are just so thankful for him, he couldn't be sweeter, or cuter in our opinion....though we could probably do without the high pitched scream he's been fancying lately. If our eardrums make it through this new little phase it will be a miracle. OUCH!!

We love you beautiful baby brother!