feliz cumpleanos, my baby boy

my baby boy turned one today. it really hit me as i was wrapping his presents. at that moment, i had an overwhelming sense of attachment, realizing that my little boy was growing up so fast and that i would be wrapping birthday gifts for years and years to come. that may sound so strange, but it was the first time i had actually wrapped a gift for him. and, i love wrapping presents, so it was pure joy for me to be doing it for him on such a special occasion.

we had a family party this evening ... ordered pizza and i made a small chocolate cake. he opened tons of gifts from us, granny naj, great ronya, tia adri, tio stephen, frank, abuelita ... he was spoiled. and, he truly enjoyed each gift as he helped me unwrap them. it was adorable. he also devoured his pizza (one of his fav foods) and literally dug into his cake. so cute.

he's been taking tentative steps for a few weeks now, but today he debuted some serious walking. i put a helium balloon in front of him and he took at least 15 steps to reach it. he's still really cautious -- and crawling is really so much faster -- but i think he'll be solely walking soon. eek!

tomorrow is his big birthday party with all his friends at gymboree. we are so excited! but, it was really, really, really nice to have an intimate family party first. i think we'll have to make that a tradition.

we also bought ourselves a "birthday" gift -- a phat new video camera. it's so purty. i'm looking forward to sharing some clips (as if i'm good at sharing pictures -- hah! -- but i promise to try!).

oh, lovely boy. mama and dada love you very much. happy birthday to you.

surprise! it's baby #2!

so, i was starting to wean cole around 9 months ... we were down to nursing at night and first thing in the morning. things with my body were beginning to return to normal ... then, i felt like i was gaining tons of weight and that my emotions were all over the place. around cole's 10-month mark, he started to reject the breast -- he would latch on for like 3 seconds and just turn his head. i realized that something was different and sort of put two and two together.

i decided to buy a pregnancy test and it just so happened that jordan was in london for the week. my mom was also out of town, but my little sis was around -- looking for an apartment and a job in austin. i took the first one on a thursday night -- and it was negative. hmmm. i could have sworn that i was pregnant. a couple of days went by and my body just wasn't feeling right. on sunday night, i decided to try the second test ... bingo! we were having another baby!

i decided to make cole a cute lil' onesie to break the news to his daddy when we picked him up at the airpot -- same thing for abuelita. it was so awesome to see their faces!

the babies will only be 18 months apart, but i think it's going to be wonderful. we've been to the doctor's twice, seeing the new baby on both occasions. everything looks great. our due date has been set for march 29th, right between my birthday and j's birthday. i'm hoping the baby comes early and we add another pisces to the fam. however, the baby could come a few days later and we may have another april fool's aries on our hands.

we'll definitely be finding out the sex of the baby again. i'm awful with surprises. so, check back in a couple of months ...