it's been a year now

I found out I was pregnant exactly one year ago today. It was a shock, to say the least, and I couldn't fathom and didn't want to imagine how my life was going to change. But now that Aaron is here and our little family is settling into its own sort of routine, I can wholeheartedly say that he was a good surprise. I do still miss the flexibility and freedom that we used to have, and the way my body used to feel young and not old and creaky the way it does now (although that has been improving), but I'm very thankful that God chose to bless us with this surprise.

No new pictures today - instead, a short video of Aaron playing with the mobile.

mario in manhattan

more music please

Aaron likes music. He enjoys classics like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and whatever little tunes I randomly sing to him. He also enjoys his mobile which plays Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach (Thanks Crystal!) for 15 minutes straight. Isaac and I often use it to occupy him in the mornings so we can grab a few extra minutes of sleep.

One morning, we woke up to the strains of Mozart and we realized he had accidentally turned on his mobile with his feet! This was a few weeks ago and he didn't do it again, so I chalked it up to a happy accident. This morning, he was lying in his crib and I put a few toys in to see what would draw his attention, but he kept staring at the side of the crib at the mobile control. I walked away, and ten minutes later, he had rotated his body 180 degrees and was kicking at the control panel. He managed to turn it on, and is is now happily turning it on and off every 30 seconds.

update

I can't believe summer is almost here. Time seems to be flying by. It's strange, having a baby makes me feel simultaneously young and old. Old because of the responsibility, of course, but young because I feel like I get to see the world through fresh eyes again.

Aaron is growing so quickly! He's four months now, and about 14.5 pounds. He's more fun than he used to be and he seems to be doing new things everyday. Since last week we've noticed that he's learned to roll side to side. This doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but considering the fact that he's been stuck on his back since January, any new whole body movement is pretty cool. Also, he's just started to discover his feet which has started to interfere with the whole diaper changing deal as he loves to grab his toes while I'm trying to get him straighten out so I can get the diaper on. And just yesterday, he started shrieking excitedly while playing with his toys. It's a little hard to tell if it's a good or bad mood indicator as the nature of it seems to turn on a dime, but it's funny. Or it was for the first 10 minutes. After that I started getting a bit of a headache ;) And he's started to get more head control which is great thing!



He's also fairly well traveled now. He's been to NJ, Chicago, and San Diego and he's ridden a bus, ferry, car, taxi, subway, train, and airplane.

Mother's day has come and gone. We were on the plane coming home from San Diego all day so we didn't really celebrate. I was semi-hoping that my mother's day present would be a "Mama" or something from Aaron, but nothing like that. (He does make the "ma" noise now, but only when he's crying really hard.) Instead, he spit up all over me on the plane and I got to smell like vomit for 3 hours until we got home. But he was full of smiles that day, so that was a pretty nice present in itself.