Easton

Tomorrow is Easton's birthday-He turns the big 8! Tomorrow at 1:03 to be exact. :) I always tell him that he is my turkey baby.  The year he was born, we left the hospital on Thanksgiving day and we drove through Arby's drive-through for our Thanksgiving dinner. haha....I didn't even care. I had my baby boy! My little girl had a baby brother! We were a real family! I was over the moon with him from the minute I laid eyes on him. 
I remember telling Paul that I knew(really knew) that there was another baby ready to come to our home. Allie was about to turn two and I remember gearing up to argue with him on why we needed to get that baby here and that it didn't matter that we were still in graduate school, that our small apartment was already bulging at the seams and that we didn't have two nickels to rub together......It didn't matter.....I KNEW he was ready to come to us and surprisingly.....Paul felt the same. (This was a miracle in and of itself):) 
The day I took the pregnancy test and I saw that second line boldly show up-I KNEW it was a boy.  Now listen.....I hate it when people talk like this.  I usually roll my eyes and think, "Oh, sure you did" but honestly and truly.....I knew the baby coming to me was a boy. 
We almost named him Bridger.  That makes me laugh now because he is such an "Easton"
He was beautiful from the minute he was born. He barely cried...if at all.   He just looked around that room and when I asked Paul, "Is he okay?!"  He turned around and said, "He's gorgeous!" He was tiny=6lbs10oz and SO dark-especially compared to my blonde Allie. He was so perfect and so sweet. :)

That first night in the hospital-I sat there holding him in the dark. He was born at the UofU hospital and it felt like too big of a hospital to have him ever leave my sight-so he didn't.:) Paul had gone home to get some sleep and it was just me and Easton.  He felt.....familiar.  That is the only way I can describe it.  I felt like I already knew him. I had no post-partum, no anxiety and was so much more confident with him than I had been with Allie.  I took him home and for the next few weeks I rocked him by the light of our tiny Christmas tree and thought to myself a million times, "It won't get better than this.....It's not possible that it can get better than this!" and in some ways....I was right. It was a perfect,simple,quiet little life.
  Allie was in love with him from the minute she met him.  I spent the next year of his life telling her to "get off him!"  She nearly loved him to death. haha!
He has been ALL boy from the start.  He went from a tiny little man to almost 20 lbs at 6 mos(HA!)....thus the nickname "bubba"  He loved "big yellows" (construction trucks) before he could speak.  He loved trains, dinosaurs and his grandpa.:)  He followed his dad around from the minute he could, wanting to do anything and everything to help him and be just like him. 
He reminds me SO much of his dad.  I love to watch his mind work.....he is sharp minded and tender hearted, which means extreme emotion and hurt feelings often. He doesn't like to be embarassed or to be in the spotlight in anyway-which makes having a mother like me a real challenge for him.;) He gets the task of being both a little brother AND a big brother, which is not always easy or fun.....but he loves them both(and they him) and has never wanted or asked for a brother....which is good, because that "ship has sailed" haha...;)
  The last few days he has been sick and has had to stay home from school.  I have enjoyed having him around me.....he is still as chill as the day he was born.  I can't wait to see the man he grows up to be and I'm excited to spend the next several years being his biggest fan in everyway possible.
I love you to the moon and back, bubba! I'm so so thankful that I get to be your mama!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUBBA!