The Last Shall Be First

Or maybe I should say: "[Our] Last Shall [Have His] First (birthday)" or "The Last Shall Be [One]".

Because Spencer's turning one year old.

I cannot believe it. I almost DO not believe it, but then I sometimes see this little boy in my house crawling around, babbling, and dumping olive oil all over the kitchen floor and I think, "Wait. Do newborns do this? Who is this child?" and, after some internal deliberation, I am forced to believe.

I guess it all makes sense when you actually total up all the minutes he's spent doing things. I mean, he spent:

314,521 minutes sleeping

and about that long hanging out in his carseat
115,306 minutes spending quality time with siblings

3,238 minutes disregarding clearly defined rules such as no fingers in the VCR
and no draining out all the drinking water
5,645 minutes having his cheeks squished, kissed, patted or wiped
40 minutes being mistaken for a doll
216,357 minutes figuring things out
like a mirror
or a glove
and 156,284 minutes shocking his mom with the blueness of his eyes and sweetness of his features

So I guess when you add that all up, and account for (a lot of) overlap you have a total of 525,600 minutes, which is. . . one year. And numbers don't lie. Or so I hear.

There is nothing I could say about this past year that wouldn't sound completely cliche. My heart can hardly hold the love I have for this boy or the joy I feel when I see the happiness he brings to his siblings.

I love how he drops what he's doing at the first sound of laughter so he can stare, smile and then squeal at the laugher. I love how he has just started to give hugs spontaneously. I love, love love the sound of his "da da da", the "d" sound of which I am completely unable to reproduce myself, and the way he sways back and forth at the knees and twists at the waist when he dances.

On his birthday we brought him along as we attended a Christmas party in the mission home, partly because it was his birthday and he deserved a party and partly because he is still nursing and I couldn't leave him with the other kids at their grandparent's house. This picture was taken by the mission president and shows Spencer's handsomeness rather well:
The next day we had a party at the grandparents' house where Greg's sister coached Spence in the blowing out of the candle.
So basically this is all pretty much just to say that after a year we've decided: We'll keep him.