Happy Birthday, Dean!!

We cannot believe that our cute, little baby went from this:

to this:

Thankfully, we all survived those first few horrible, colicky months and have learned to LOVE being together.

Dean is truly the light of our lives and our greatest joy. He is so much fun to have around. He is constantly moving, and talking, and loves to know exactly what is going on at all times. If I'm cooking, he HAS to be up at the same level as me (really, I have to be holding him) because he HAS to know what's going on. He loves watching machines work, and is truly the sweetest boy who has ever lived, or at least that's what we think. :)

His skills that I can remember off the top of my head include:

giving me lots of kisses daily

waving "bye-bye" and sometimes saying it

clapping for himself when he does something he thinks was pretty cool

saying "dada", "mama", and more (we're also pretty sure he has a word for "dog", though neither of us could repeat it)

turning the light switch on and off

standing independently for a few seconds before he realizes he's not holding onto anything

making us laugh harder than we ever have before

He is the best and we are so excited to see what Heavenly Father has in store for him. We love you, our little Dean man!!

A Good Helper is Hard to Find

Bear with me, the spacing is weird and I cannot fix it..... We love our house, but it has some weird quirks. Including some loud neighbors. In order to help remedy the situation (i.e. to help stop Dean from being abruptly awoken from a nap by noise), we are in the process of switching Dean into the spare room. This is quite the task, considering the spare room had wallpaper on half of it, and a hideous chair rail as well. Unfortunately, like most of our home improvement projects, I don't have any "before" pictures, but trust me, you should pat us on the back when we're done. One problem with switching Dean into the spare room is that Dean's current room (which will become the new spare room) doesn't have a phone jack (one of the quirks), which means we would have to move our router into a different place. We didn't want it in our room or downstairs in the kitchen because I often have Dean in these rooms during the day with me to play. Luckily John's dad was so wonderful to come help us pull the phone line through into what will become our new spare room. Problem solved. Dean is so curious and wants to see what's going on at all times, so I couldn't possibly keep him away from the "project" as it was going on. Unfortunately, you can't put an almost one-year-old on the ground with screws, screw drivers, pokey wires, drywall saw, etc. So I did the next best thing, which worked like a charm. I put Dean in his crib, right next to John and Jan so he could be in on the "action". He loved watching and I had to run and grab our camera. It was a cute 3-generation shot:

Once Dean realized I had the camera out, he then proceeded to ham it up for us. I cannot believe that his first birthday is NEXT FRIDAY!!! I can't believe this time last year I was so pregnant and ready to burst. I'll reminisce more on the past year next week for an official "birthday" post.