Cookie Monster style!

Today was Lucas' 1st birthday party! I know he turned one a week ago but it wasnt until his party that I felt it really hit me that he is no longer a baby! Hes on his way to wanting to be more and more independent! I know that he will always need his momma but there are times that i wish i could just snuggle him to bits and never let him go!(as long as he is quiet and not whining in my ear while i am doing it! haha!) One year of one of the most challenging and rewarding times of my life! Before he was born i had an image in my head of what motherhood would be like and more importantly what my child would be like! I think that God had a little chuckle up there in them heavens of His when he listened to the thoughts of us soon to be parents; cause He knows what lessons are to be taught and what tears are going to be shed and what struggles each parent is going to have to deal with and of course how much we are going to have to rely on HIM! The immense love that you feel for your child the second they are born is nothing like you will ever experience in your life! To know that God loves us like that, and how many children he loves like that is unfathomable to us, but in that second you get a glimpse of what that kind of love is like! Nothing prepared me for the rollercoaster of the first months of my child's life. The issues with jaundice, with feeding (getting him to nurse properly) and his slow weight gain. There were days that felt like eternity and i felt like the worst mother in the world! I remember thinking how it was never ending and this stage would last forever and than all of a sudden he is up and walking around! How did that happen?? How did we get here?? Where did my little tiny (if 8lbs can be tiny!) little yellow tanned boy go? The toll that labour and pregnancy can take on ones body and emotions is crazy!! I think that each woman is going to have a little chat with Eve when we get to heaven!! But the human body is amazing and God is amazing and just when you think that you will never ever feel normal in your body again you start to..just a little..you start to see those little numbers on the scale start to drop away (maybe not as fast as you would like them too!) and your emotions start to level out again! Although if you were to ask my husband he might say they are never level!! Pssh what do men know anyways? But even though my body is coming back and a little piece of my mind, i am no longer that same woman i once was! I feel like i can call myself a woman now more so than ever. I feel like that person before Lucas was more of a "girl"! This little person has taught me patience (or lack thereof sometimes!), simple pleasures, compassion (i'm a lot more weepy now than i ever was before!), unbreakable love, that i am too self-centered at times and need to rid myself of that, that smiles are all you need to break you out of a terrible fog in the morning, that coffee really is your best friend, that my husband is a great great man, and that God is huge, bigger than any problem, and loves me like my child loves me through his little innocent eyes even when mommy looses her cool with him! So today we celebrated. Some might say that i went a little overboard with a birthday party that my son will never remember but for me it was a celebration that i made it through a year; that my son is no longer that teeny tiny baby and I am no longer that "girl"!! We have changed and morphed as a family and as individials! Today we celebrated that! (i think my husband is pretty clueless that was what we were really "celebrating" but i will fill him later..or he will read this blog!haha!) Thank you Reuben for standing by me through my many ups and DOWNS and my body changes! I love you! And than you Lucas for putting up with a less than perfect mommy who loves you as perfectly as i know how, but most of all you are God's child before you are mine and he has blessed me with you!! So here are some pics of how we partied it up cookies monster style!!