It's Official: Luke is 1.

Somehow an entire year has passed since this happened.

Luke, in utero on his birth day

Dang, how did I ever fit him in there?! Dave took a picture of me in the waiting area outside the OR right before we went in for all the pre-op stuff, and I am not kidding when I say it looks like I’m holding a beach ball under my shirt. And, I was wearing one of Dave’s XXL shirts!

Here he is, minutes after we met face to face.

Luke, minutes old

He was such a quiet, cuddly baby. He’s still a quiet, cuddly toddler – except when he’s yelling at his sister, but sometimes a man just has to stand up for himself.

Here he is now. He’s finally doubled his chin, but he’s still a skinny little thing.

Luke, 1 year

At 12 months old he is a walking, talking, eating machine. The child loves to eat; what he does not love is being fed snack when he knows that real food (read: supper) is cooking. I have to banish him from the kitchen until it’s time to eat because he drives me nuts, climbing my leg, lunging into the pots/pans/oven when I pick him up. He doesn’t care if the broccoli is raw, he’s ready to eat!

He says a bunch of things:

Mmmmnak (snack)
Up we go
Soft touch
All done
Hey
Dada
Papa
Pop
Mama
Ella
Georgia
Dog dog
Kitty
Thank you
Mickey
I love you

And he sings – the ABCs, M-I-C-K-E-Y, God of Wonders, and other sing along songs. (Obviously he sings them in Jibberish, but you can pick out the tune.) He loves music. When we play in The Big Room, he goes to the radio and stares at it so that we know we need to turn it on. Sometimes he dances, if he really likes the song.

He reads; he loves books. I put all the board books on the shelf that he can reach, and I often find him sitting in the floor with books all around, studying. He demands that we read a stack at bedtime, and then I have to hide them to get him to go to sleep.

He walks and climbs. He already knows how to go up and down stairs. He knows how to back off of the couch or bed feet-first. He thinks he can step into the bathtub by himself, and he would if there were a step stool in the bathroom.

He sneaks and opens the potty, plays in it, and closes it back so we won’t know he’s been there – all in silence. He pulls off pieces of toilet paper and tears them into tiny bits, strewing them through the house in his wake, like a flower girl.

He loves the play kitchen and the McDonald’s drive-thru. He makes a cell phone out of anything, including his hand, and walks around talking on it all the time (“Hey!” “Hey!”), sometimes he gives it to us to talk, too.

He plays peek-a-boo, especially when we are waking Ella up in the mornings and he’s finding her under the covers. He also plays patty-cake, and he rolls the dough. He folds his hands for the blessing, and then he claps for Ella after she sings it.

He started “school” Tuesday (he’s going to Mother’s Day Out twice a week), and he loves it. When we went to Meet the Teacher night, we had to drag him out of his classroom.

He’s already cut his nursing sessions down to sleep times (most days), and he usually wakes up twice over night to nurse and cuddle.

He has four teeth and another one about to pop through any day.

Edited to add: He weighs 20 lbs. and 14 oz and he's 30.5 inches long.

He’s a happy, affectionate, active toddler who is, quite literally at times, running head first into his second year. One year ago today, God blessed me with another amazing child, so different from his sister, yet a perfect fit in our family.