Simon

On Friday night, February 11, 2010, John and I headed to the hospital to begin the process of bringing our son into the world. We had been eagerly awaiting his arrival and we were so excited to know we'd be meeting him the very next day.

I had a few prayers to God about Simon's birth and every one of them was answered. My epidural wasn't as good as with Malachi's labor and delivery, but it did help a bit. The labor started on Saturday the 12th and he was born at 1:54 p.m. (EST) and weight 8 lbs. 4 oz. and was 21 inches long. He passed all of the newborn tests and was cleared to be with us.  He cried a lot that first day, but was amazing to us. His blood work and eventually his skin showed that he was jaundiced. The doctors said it was because our blood types conflicted. So he spent the remainder of our time in the hospital in the UV bed getting his tan on. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of this. He was pretty cute laying in the bed with his eye protectors on.

We were released on Sunday afternoon and went home to introduce Simon to his big brother. Our good friend Sam had watched Malachi the whole weekend and welcomed us home with a clean apartment and welcome home signs and cards for Simon.

The first few days we were definitely in our honeymoon phase. We loved our new life with our two boys. Simon didn't wake up every two hours because of the jaundice - and he had a big appetite, I couldn't keep up with it and had to supplement. I was also supplementing because the jaundice wasn't going away the way we'd hoped it would.

Finally the jaundice was gone, and so were we. Simon handled our travel to TX like a champ, sleeping the whole way on the flight from D.C. He met our friends in Dallas, and then after a couple of days in Houston for Daddy's work, he slept through another flight to Costa Rica.

He adjusted the best out of the family to our move, only showing a little bit of stress here and there when the parents were stressed out. Simon adjusted to having a nanny and a mommy who works part time (although sometimes the mommy has a hard time leaving in the morning).

He's grown and developed at a rate completely new to John and I , and was wearing his brother's 18 month clothing at 10 months (partly because he was huge, partly because of clothing shrinkage). Before that, his development (laughing, smiling, cooing, talking, rolling, sitting, etc.) seemed a bit early if not right on time. His first tooth came in at 5 months, 3 weeks, and his next tooth came in a few days later. His next two teeth didn't come in until he was eight months old, and he's slowly been teething since then. He now has eight teeth and it seems his first molar is forming and going to come in.  Learning to crawl was difficult for him because of our tile and wood flooring that offered no traction. He did the army crawl for a long time and finally mastered crawling at about ten months old. Shortly after that he started to "cruise" around our furniture and now will take a couple of steps between pieces with confidence, but no more than that.

In January of 2011 Simon enjoyed his first ever vacation in Minnesota. The cold didn't seem to bother him nearly as much as it did his mother. He met his Grandpa on his mommy's side for the first time as well as many extended family members and some friends that mommy's had for many years (one friend mommy has had for almost 27 years). He really enjoyed flying and was just like his brother was at that age.

He prefers to crawl than practice walking. He's talking up a storm now, saying a ton of words in both Spanish and English: Mama, Papa, and Hola in Spanish, Hello, Hi, Mama (the difference is in the accent), Dada, Ow, Uh-oh, and possibly more.

He's had two colds and one infection (throat and ear) but otherwise has been healthy over the last year. He's a bit of an attention hog, and cries even if he's fallen just a little bit. He's certainly the baby of the family. But he's amazing, and we're so happy he's in our lives.

Simon, we love you so much. Happy Birthday (a day late).