I recently looked back on this blog and read some of the first entries. I know everyone says "Cherish every moment because they go by too quickly." In our case, it seems as if they really have disappeared in the blink of an eye. For us, this last year was one battle after another. Between the birth and buying the house and moving several times, it isn't difficult to remember things based on where we were living at the time they happened. While we have been fortunate to have a roof over our heads the whole time, it wasn't exactly the ideal situation. While reading though, I realized that I had forgotten the wonderful time we had watching him change and grow. Since he turned one and the daily milestones are in the past, I forgot how awesome it was to wake up and see that he knew something different than the day before. I read about the first time we caught his little smile on camera and the first time he laughed. I looked back on the first Christmas after his birth and how tiny he was. The beast of a child that we call ours now holds very little resemblance to that tiny baby we brought home from the hospital. Even the posts I put up from the time we moved into the house are starkly different from the last week or so. There are very few parts of his infancy that I "miss" and I blame that mostly on sleep deprivation and pure exhaustion. I do remember when it was easy to pick him up and it was nice when he didn't move around a lot because we could actually get something done without him in one arm at all times.
I cannot say that I miss not sleeping. We have really fallen into a wonderful pattern lately where Link sleeps nearly all the way through the night. He goes to bed between 8 and 9 and doesn't get up until 3 or 4 and then usually goes back to sleep quickly and stays in dream land until 8. Occasionally I have to get up with him more often than this, but it has become the exception.
He is blabbering A LOT now. It is a little strange to watch him attempt to talk to me because he seems frustrated that I don't understand him. I wish there was a device I could strap around his throat like the dogs in the movie UP. Today he wanted me to know something about the box he was playing with and he even stuttered a little in his attempt to make a word. In the end he couldn't get it out and so he just kept going in his normal fashion and I was forced to nod and smile like I always do. Sometimes he stands at the baby gate separating the dining room from the kitchen and just talks and talks to me. The only "semi-words" he knows are "Da Da Da" and "Ma Ma Ma" which he commonly gets confused while talking to Gena or me. He has been getting better at "baby" and he says "Hi" but not in proper context.
I never understood how characters in movies and on television could understand a language but not speak it, but now I can grasp the concept a bit better. Lincoln doesn't have the anatomical ability to speak English yet, but he understands it pretty well. I can tell him to go get his cup and he immediately looks for it, finds it and brings it to me. If I ask him if he is hungry, he tells me "more" in sign language...which is his word for food, more, eat and drink. We tried teaching him others but "more" and "all done" are the only two he picked up. He knows when I say "bath" to go to the bathroom and yell at the tub. He also knows that when I say "Let's go to bed" or "It's time for bed" that he should go for the stairs and as soon as I open the door he begins his ascent. Pretty cool if you ask me.
One final non-Lincoln bit of news: My favorite band is coming to the Royal Oak Music Theatre in April. I bought our tickets the minute they went on presale so that I wouldn't have to worry about them selling out. A couple of weeks after I made this purchase, it was announced that there would be a contest for VIP tickets to the show and all you had to do was click a link on the band's site and put in your email address or something. So I entered with a couple of email addresses and I made Gena enter as well. We never win these things so I kind of forgot we even did it. A couple more weeks passed and one night Gena and I were putting the baby to bed and she went downstairs to wait for me to get him asleep and come back down when I was done. A few minutes after she closed the door to the stairs I heard the door fly open and footsteps coming up the stairs fast. Before I could even ask what was up, Gena jumped through the door yelling "We won!! We won!! Well, I mean I won!" She had received a voicemail telling her that she was the winner of 2 VIP tickets to the show and that she should call back by the next day to verify her information.
After she verified with the company, we looked at the rules page for the contest. As it turns out, there are only 9 cities participating in this VIP contest and Royal Oak is one of them. After reading a bit further I learn that not only did we have the good fortune of being one of the few cities on the tour to be able to get these tickets, but there will be only 1 pair of tickets per location. This means that among however many hundreds of people who probably entered this thing, Gena and I are the only 2 people who got VIP tickets and we get to hang out after the show to meet the band!! We NEVER win anything. We don't even share a prize with 100 others in the lottery and this time we were the ONLY winners. Pretty freakin' amazing if you ask me. Now the only worry is that Lincoln has a terrible night that night for some reason and we have to come home early or something.
Wish us luck...
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