Happy Birthday Parker (a few weeks late)

The past few weeks have been brutal. Aarik has been working six days a week which has left me to deal with all of the many things that have been going on in our home life during the same time period. While I won't bore you with the details of those many things, I will say it's been a lot to do alone. So much, in fact, that at least once a week I have a complete melt down/ borderline nervous break down of some sort and then have to continue on with whatever I am doing, without feeling any relief. Sleep deprivation and overwhelm have lead to too many accidents, from what I still believe to be a broken toe (it's been 2 weeks and I'm still in CRAZY pain), to running over a tricycle, dropping things, unexplained bruises on various parts of my body... I could go on but won't. Luckily nothing to do with our kiddos (well Mckenzie doesn't know about her trike yet. I'm sure that won't go over well...). Yesterday I finally reached my limit and hit the kind of wall, from whence you do not return. SO grateful Aarik took the day off, especially after Parker was up all night, so that I could sleep in until almost nine, do my grocery shopping, and do a few other major things that I'm on a time crunch to get done. I have been trying to get this posted for a while now, and it's basically come down to this: either I blog about Parker's first year using whatever pictures I have on the computer already, or I never get this post up so... Parker just turned one!! What a long journey we've been on just to get to that point! After seeing so many families struggle through so much for so long, and sometimes still not be able to have children, I'm so grateful that we only had to suffer through a few years of heart ache and pregnancy loss to get him here. This past year has been nothing short of insanity. Since he was about six weeks old he has been a demanding little cuss and has spent a majority of his life screaming about something. Truthfully, most of the time he had very good reason. Half of the time it was ear infections, which we had never experienced with our others. Luckily the past couple of months have brought more peaceful times and we have been able to finally enjoy our sweet boy. He seriously has such a fun personality. He loves to help clean up around the house, he LOVES other kids and socializing and he is quite the explorer. He is, by far, the most independent of any of our kids, although you wouldn't know it if you were to meet him when he was in one of his "mommy" moods. He loves both of his siblings, but he and Mckenzie have such a sweet and special bond. He absolutely adores her. They'll play together for hours and she never acts like it's a bother to her and he LOVES her for it. It's obvious he looks up to his big brother as well. He likes to wrestle Konnor and also makes attempts to play legos with him, which is a heart attack inducing situation for me. Parky (that's what we call him) only wants to eat if everyone else is and only wants to eat what everyone else is eating. He loves to give kisses, and will do so upon request, says mama, dada and no no, loves to watch Super Why, loves to go places, has no fear, is a climber, loves water, isn't a huge fan of sweets, loves chicken and makes the "aaah" noise after he sees someone else take a drink, after he takes a drink or sometimes when he's done nursing. We are so blessed to have our sweet, cuddly and finally ear infection free little 1 year old with us! He was worth the wait and we are so grateful to have filled the hole that was in our hearts knowing he was missing! Not necessarily in order, here are some pictures of Parker's first year: