October 15

The day has come and gone but I am just now getting the chance to blog about it.

Last week we were in Oklahoma City for a horse show. I may start calling Sprout Sport, because he was such a good sport about getting dragged around to restaurants, the fairgrounds, the bombing memorial and museum, and about celebrating his birthday on the road.

He was so perfectly born 10 days ahead of schedule, on October 15. We ate cupcakes in Oklahoma, but I baked a rainbow cake for his celebration with friends and family at home the Saturday before we left town. I'm not going to be making any frickin' more rainbow cakes, it was so time consuming, but I am glad I did because there is nothing more perfect than a rainbow cake for your rainbow baby on his first birthday. Proof:

I can't believe he is one. I still look at him sometimes, thinking that he's really here and he's really all mine. He is starting to wobble around on two legs now, and today walked across the whole living room to greet me when I got home from work.

True to his nature, he appears to be back on track from the traveling, nursing to sleep before 8:00 tonight, but last night he awoke early enough into the night that it was painful to get up. There is one big difference between getting awoken at one or two--Mr. E and I can't agree as to what time it was--and three or four or five. He no longer gets up to nurse back to sleep, so my only trick is gone. Last night I put him back in his crib when he started squirming around in our bed, and I don't even know if I fell asleep again or not before I trudged back to his room to bring him back to our bed to try again. That time he nursed to sleep and I got to cuddle with my baby for a few hours. He is not as cuddly anymore as he gets more mobile and more curious. And I was thinking today how cuddly he was and has been and that even in utero I think he liked to cuddle. When I was pregnant with Blue and would lie on my belly, he would move all over the place, back and forth and back and forth. But Sprout would be still when I did the same. I had wanted him to move more like Blue did, but I am so happy to have had a cuddly baby. But all good things must end, and I think we are getting to the end of cuddling. i.e. and nursing. I am so torn about whether or not I want it to end! I have made it no secret that I want to get pregnant again ASAP, and nursing is still interfering with my cycle. But when I think about just stopping it seems an overly dramatic reaction to Sprout's turning one. He actually bit me a few times last week, and has been slapping and pinching for quite some time but when he's not generally beating me up I guess I really still love it. But I did wear an old B-cup bra today after realizing that my nursing bra had gaping space between it and my breasts. So, I think the end is near. Then I think how nice it will be to know when I can (theoretically) get pregnant. Or, in the alternative, how nice it will be to be neither pregnant nor breastfeeding for a little bit. Then again, I thought I would quit pumping at 8 months, then 9, then 10, and I didn't do that, so we shall see.

Anyway, that is my update. I lit those two birthday candles on October 12, but I didn't light a candle on October 15. Every day, though, a flame burns for my Blue.