Mr. Jasper Corey is ONE!

Oh, my heart… I just spent a little time dealing with Open Diary slowness to read a few entries from exactly one year ago. A couple days before his birth, and then those first days AFTER his birth. Do you guys remember…. do you remember how AWFUL those first couple weeks were? As much as I was completely in love with my sweet baby Jasper, I had a pretty rough go for awhile. Not only was I a hormonal, emotional wreck, recovering from giving birth, trying to take care of two kids, Nathan was busy going to the deer hunting camp (ugh), I felt SO ALONE, nursing was pure torture, and THEN I GOT THE FLU. I was falling apart for awhile, and you guys were so so supportive. Your notes literally got me through some dark days, and so many of you reached out to me to try and help, texting me and even offering to send food to my house. I truly appreciate you guys so much, and reading that all again really refreshed it in my mind.

But, in the grand scheme of things, it was such a short time, and I’m glad everything got better as time went on. The painful nursing lasted about 8 weeks (and if I can recall, it was similar with Wesley too)… I hope if we ever have a third baby that I’ll be much more prepared. I thought I would have been prepared having a second baby–I could not have been more wrong. The whole time, though, Jasper himself wasn’t the issue… it was everything else surrounding it. My emotions, dealing with being sick, pain, and all the huge changes happening. We were also in the midst of building our house, and had some stresses going on there too.

But, let’s focus on the Happy Stuff now. Jasper is ONE! Here is an incredible comparison shot.
HE IS SO HANDSOME!!

And if you look closely in the second picture, you can see his "lump" on his chest right above the nipple. I guess maybe waiting on surgery wasn’t such a bad thing, at least he doesn’t have a big scar in the picture (although they say it won’t leave much of a scar; I guess we’ll find out!)

We had his "cake smash" session a couple days ago. I knew I wanted to get that done before his actual birthday so I didn’t have to stress about it on the actual birthday. Plus, we were planning on having the party at the Bowling Alley in town and they don’t allow you to bring outside cake (you just have them make it) so it worked out well to do it on a separate day. I drove to the studio where we did his newborn photos, and a photographer friend of mine helped me shoot the boys. It was a total disaster (the kids were running all over the place and there was blue frosting EVERYWHERE) but LOTS of fun! Here’s a peek at some of my favorites….

Seriously, cutest baby ever!

Anyway, we had a really fun birthday party tonight (Friday the 1st) at the bowling alley in town just a few miles from our house and it was the BEST decision ever. (I felt a little guilty at first I didn’t put together the HUGE party like we had for Wesley. If you recall, we had over 70+ people there, a giant bounce castle, and tons of food at our shop at our old house!) This time, we had just family (about 20 people), and the bowling alley put everything together for us so all we had to do was show up… pizza, pop, cupcakes, and kids bowling with the bumpers and the ball rolling things (not sure what they’re called). We showed up and had the kids bowl from 6pm – 7pm and they started bringing pizzas out around 6:30 or so. Everything went really smoothly and I was impressed with the service. But the best part was walking away from the mess at the end of the night knowing it wasn’t something in my house I had to clean up! We ended up back at our house to open presents but that was perfect.

It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed since he was born. He has grown into this little boy just full of energy and personality and I absolutely love every inch of him. He WALKS now, too, like a pro, shouting as he goes along these cute little noises like, "Aiye! Aiye!" as if he’s calling for someone all the time to come see him/look at him, etc. He wants to be near me a lot but is still pretty independent. He eats like crazy, and it always seems like he’s hungry, too. He still nurses (yay for making it the first year!) and I got a cute comparison shot I shared on my local La Leche League page this morning. What the heck, I’ll share it here, too:

I’m just so, so incredibly lucky and blessed to have this sweet boy (and his brother, too) in my life. To just think, a few short years ago I never imagined or thought this would be a possibility. I could never have even imagined how amazing things would turn out. How precious, how sweet, and how FREAKING ADORABLE my babies would end up being. Some days, I wish I could go back in time and give myself a hug and share photos of my gorgeous babies. No matter what happened, things are truly as they were meant to be!