Swen is ONE!

Before having Swen, the previous eight years of my life seemed to go by very very very slowly. While I was in college, my parents paid for most of my school, but I still needed to work to help pay what I could. I waited tables. It was a long four years. After I graduated, I thought I had found my dream job. I was going to teach kindergarten! Unfortunately, it was really hard. I had horrible kids. I felt like my weeks were never ending. Luckily, I met Matt in the end, and that it made go by faster, but it still wasn't fun.

Now when I want my life to slow down, it just seems to have disappeared. It has been an entire year since I brought this perfect little baby home from the hospital. I cannot believe it. I had a couple of cry sessions the week before his birthday asking myself how this happened. I am not a crier! I now understand when other parents tell me to enjoy ALL the tiring, long, hard, amazing, and fun moments because they will be gone before I know it. I have been really cherishing my time with Swen the last couple of weeks because of how fast it hit me that he will grow up way too quickly.

When Swen was little, I thought to myself that a newborn is the best age of babies. I would look at older babies and dread it! I didn't think it could be as good as it was right in that moment. Then as he grew older, I realized that each new stage is just as good, if not better than the one before. However, I am CONVINCED one year old is the very best age there is. I love having a toddler. He has this huge personality in a little tiny (well if a fat baby can be called tiny) body. He toddles around talking in his baby words while destroying everything he can. Then while he is messing up whatever room he's in, he laughs as if it is the best thing in the world. Right now his favorites are pulling all the wipes out of the container, taking laundry out of drawers, removing DVD's from drawers, and emptying all the cupboards. Isn't he talented?

Another of his greatest talents is eating/nursing. I no longer need to use our garbage disposal. He wants everything we are eating or drinking. Especially if we are eating pizza or macaroni and cheese. Swen still loves to nurse. He doesn't need to nurse as frequently as before, just a few times a day. I don't see him giving it up any time soon.

Swen's biggest talent of all is NOT sleeping. This past week has actually started to improve a bit. I'm hoping the trend continues. I'm tired of being tired all the time!

We had a wonderful 1st birthday party for him with family. My mom did such a good job blogging about it that I don't need to. You can read about it here:

 http://itslegs.blogspot.com/2013/05/that-baby-was-born-five-weeks-early.html

Here are way too many pictures of our little ONE YEAR OLD SWEN! I'm so grateful to be a mom and to be able to be with him all day.... and night. Actually, that's a lie. I would like to be far, far away from him at night. :)