1 Year Old

Dearest Perron,

This photo perfectly describes how you embrace life.  Full of joy and enthusiam.  I hope you never loose that.  Oh what a year it has been.  I was telling your daddy tonight before bed time that it was hard to imagine that this time last year I had not even been able to hold you.  In fact, outside of that very brief moment in the operating room, I had never even seen you.  But I already knew.  I already knew how much I loved you and I already knew that at that moment, 7:42am on July 18, 2009, my life had changed forever.  You have been the light and joy in your daddy and my life since you came into this world.  It is hard to imagine ever loving anything or anyone as much as we love you.

You have been a ball of energy this past month.  You are a full on crawling machine.  We say you crawl with purpose; which is so funny because everyone says your mommy walks with purpose.  You are non-stop energy.  You love to bounce up and down on your bottom when you get excited and sometimes you bounce so hard you almost launch yourself over.  You love to play with all your toys, but your favorite thing to do is pull up.  You pull up on everything!  Most of the time we can find you standing at the baby gate like you are in baby jail.  You talk non-stop, but are not officially saying any words.  You just babble and squeal at the top of your lungs.

I weighed you tonight and you were 18 lbs and 12.5 ozs.  Such a big boy!  That brings your total weight gain this year to almost 15 pounds.  You are a GREAT eater.  You will eat absolutely anything we put in front of you.  You love fruit and are particularly fond of watermelon and mandrain oranges.  You eat turkey lunchmeat almost every day.  You like veggie burger, turkey burgers, and regualr hamburgers too.  You love Mexican food and could eat black beans and rice until you exploded.  This is a very important trait to have in the Crigler family.  You still drink four bottles a day, but I am sure we will be tranistioning to milk in the next month or so.  I am a little nervous based on your history of tummy problems.  Hopefully it will go smoothly.  We will be very happy when we don't have to buy formula and formula water.  Now if we could only get you potty trained and out of diapers, we would be millionaires....just kidding...kind of.  You still wear a broad range of clothes, but you are pretty much in anywhere from 6 to 12 month clothes.  You have been in this size range for quite a while, so we are getting a lot of good use out of all your outfits.

You love Meaghan, your new nanny, and are so happy to see her every morning.  You jump into her arms as soon as she gets to the house.  Y'all play all day long and she takes you to do lots of fun things.  You are taking another round of swimming lessons and you are the star of your class.  You also go to Mommy and Baby Yoga with Meaghan.  You have quite the full schedule because mommy takes you to Kindermusik as well and you LOVE it.  You love playing with all the toys and singing and dancing around.  The parachute is by far your favorite.

You have such a beautiful, sparkly, loving personality.  People are immediately attracted to you, and you can be quite the flirt.  Mommy and daddy are so proud of how far you have come this year.  We can not wait to see where the upcoming years take you.  We know that you will do big things and we hope you know that your mommy and daddy will always love you and be your biggest fans!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy