Happy Birthday, Oliver!

I can't imagine that there will ever be a year in my life that matches this past one in terms of being both the most challenging and the most rewarding, all at the same time. This messy, difficult year is something I treasure in my heart, though I don't know if I ever thought I would get to this place.

In Oliver's birth story I wrote:

How odd it is to finally meet someone with whom you are going to have one of the most spectacular love affairs of your life with. It's like you already know the future, but here you are living in the present doing the most basic of get-to-know-yous. I don't love him yet. But someday I will. I caress his bruised face and the world feels still.

And from where I sit today, unbelievably in love with that baby boy, somehow more all the time, I still can't believe he's here and he's mine. That somehow he wasn't just born this morning, but in fact 365 mornings ago. That we have a whole year under our belt. That we are bonded for life and I love him in a way that will never be matched in quite the same way - it's unique to my love for Bella and my love for Husband.

The days are long but the years are short. Yes, exactly that.

I put a lot into Oliver's first year video. Partly because he's our last baby and I want to really mark this occasion, but partly because it's such a lovely, lovely thing to look back on this past year (plus) in a positive light. To gloss over the puking, the post-birth complications, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush (was that all the times we got thrush?), the postpartum depression, and all the rest of the gunk and instead see only all of those happy moments linked together into one glorious year. Well, it's all very chipper except for that one picture right in the middle...one of those iPhone pictures I sent to Husband at work on a particularly challenging day. Ha :)

I'm proud of this video. Perhaps more proud than any I have made before. It validates my effort to document life relentlessly, even when it all feels like poo. And it reminds me that, despite momentary whiffs of stinky, life is grand and exactly what I want it to be.

And I'm proud of me. I - no, WE - survived this past year. We adjusted to parenting two kids and all that entails. We figured it out and we persevered through the yuck and all along the way nurtured our boy. Our dreamy, wonderful, and just plain delightful boy. (And let's not forget that great girl of ours, too. As she would say, "I need care and attention, too!")

So here it is. From telling Husband about being pregnant (his reaction still cracks me up every time) to finally compiling all those belly pictures in a meaningful way, to the birth, and then beyond. It's Oliver's entire life up to this point.

Happy birthday to my baby boy. And happy day of birth to me.