One Year

Wow.  I sat beside Eli's crib while he was sleeping and watched my baby turn one year old.  Isn't it amazing that at 11:59pm he's still 11 months old but one short minute later he's a one year old?  Sometimes that's how I feel this year has been, one short minute.  I'm happy/sad/excited that his birthday is here.  It's incredibly hard to believe it's already been a year, and what a year it's been!  Personally, I think January is going to be a tough month for me because that's when he was diagnosed, had his first surgery and spent most of that month in the hospital.  Right now when we think back one year we remember "It's a boy!" and "Look at those cheeks!"  We remember going to my grandmother's 95th birthday celebration and showing him off.  We had ballgames, a circus, lots of snuggly nights and hugs & kisses.  Our struggles didn't start until Christmas/New Year's, and that timeframe is only in hindsight. 

Eli is very close to crawling.  We had to lower his crib mattress the other night because he's starting to pull himself to his knees in the crib.  Yesterday with his therapist he was pulling himself up using the couch and a little leg support from us.  Over the past week he's fallen to his face & belly several times as he rocks forward and pulls his pelvis off the floor, then he's mad because he's "stuck" on his belly & we have to help remind him that he can roll to his back from his belly.  Despite not crawling yet he's very mobile with his scooting.  He's also got the longest reach I've ever seen on a little guy.  Seriously, his physical therapist talks about his Gadget arms and how far away we have to put things to entice him to crawl, otherwise he'll just reach out and grab it.

Today is Zachary's Halloween party at school.  For a kid who said "we don't need Halloween this year" he is very excited about it!  I volunteered to help and can't wait to see all the cute little ones in their costumes.  I'm going to be wearing one of my Dad's old western shirts and handkerchiefs with cowboy boots & a hat.  Zachary will be very stylish in a Cat in the Hat bowtie, hat, gloves & tail.  We'll get pics on here after we all go Trick-or-Treating this weekend.  Halloween was never something I looked forward to until having kids, now even this Halloween-Grinch has had a change of heart (for the cute stuff anyway!)

Monday night we had a photo session with Mindy Graber, owner of Reflections by Mindy.  She did a great job as always and now we're back to our usual complaint with her work....narrowing down our choices!  If you'd like to see go to www.smugmug.com and type mgraber in the search box at the top.  When you open her gallery you can find the session labeled Veale and click on that to see the pictures.  We had a blast doing them.  In the past Zachary's not been the easiest to work with when it came to pictures but they were both so good and had a lot of fun. 

Eli's birthday party is on Saturday at two.  Anyone who wants to come wish him a "Happy Birthday" is welcome to come by our messy house & do so!  It's not anything fancy & please don't bring anything, we're just having cake & ice cream & a good time!  Thanks for all the support this past year.  We appreciate all of it and you've all been so good at it that we'll just keep asking for more! ;)