Wow...

Jimmy turned 1 this week. Yes. That's right. One year old. This photo was taken not long after Jimmy was born, just over a year ago.

Jimmy has been around the Sun one whole rotation since he was pulled from my belly, kicking and screaming (no, really, he screamed at the indignity of being so cold and exposed after the warmth of my uterus). He still kicks and screams, mostly when we wont let him do something, i.e. brush his teeth when he's only just cleaned them. Yep, that's my boy.

And that's just it: he's so much more boy now than baby. Oh don't get me wrong, he still likes being nursed to sleep, he's still in nappies, and he still can't walk. All of that will change in the next year. And then he'll be even further from the squishy, vernix covered, pink thing that he was when the doctors held him up for me to see, placenta still attached, telling the World that he had arrived (read: screaming newborn).

Words have been flowing in my head all week, describing how it all feels, what it's been like, what this little person means to Michael and me. Words flowing like a river, freely and fast, but my hands just haven't been able to catch them and transfer them to text. Like water, the words slip through my fingers before I get anywhere near a computer or paper and pen, and then they are gone and I'm left with the sensation but none of the substance. And then I look at Jimmy.

I look at Jimmy and my heart swells, it spills over with love and joy.

And then, on his birthday, as I was nursing him to sleep for his morning nap, and one word stuck. One simple, little word that always holds so much in its three letters, but it's not my word, and I didn't hear it in my voice.

It's a word my Auntie K uses when she's impressed with something, be it food, artwork, knitting or anything handmade, and she said it while sitting across from Jimmy and me, while we were all in Warwick for my Mum's birthday. In that one word she captured all the emotion of motherhood, all the joy and pride of a grandmother, all the realisations daughters have when they are become mothers and look at their parents in a new light, plus the added delight at watching Jimmy. And that word?

"Wow"

Happy Birthday little man! (More birthday related posts to come.)

Top photo taken by a theater nurse at the Royal Brisbane Women's Hospital, using Michael's camera. All the others were taken by Michael.