Your first year

Dear Maxwell,

I sit here with my fingers poised over the keys, waiting. Waiting for the right words to come to express the way that I'm feeling. The best way to describe the overwhelming gratitude I feel for being blessed with you and the sadness that plagues me because you're no longer an infant and it went by so fast. You're growing up in a blur! Despite my best effort to slow time and burn your facial expressions and mannerisms indelibly into my brain, I know that time will fade these sweet memories and replace them with new ones. I am the luckiest Mom to have spent the last 365 days with you. This year has flown by faster than I ever imagined. You have such a big personality for a little guy. I laugh to myself as I think of your resourcefulness and dogged determination and think happily, "He got that from me." Then I'm immediately filled with worry as I think of some of the other things you could have inherited from me. Will you be too hard on yourself? Will you wear your heart on your sleeve? Will your mind race like a C-span ticker-tape the way mine does?

For you, this birthday represents one of many firsts. For me, it is the marking of a last. The last time I'll laugh that my baby plows into his first piece of cake with curious delight. (Yes, I made you wait an entire year before giving you chocolate!) The last "first birthday" I'll celebrate. The last time I'll feel the subtle passing of your infancy, when you would lay snuggled in your swaddle blanket and sleep in my arms for hours. You are much to curious and enterprising to stay still now!

This day I will remember always. Tonight I will stand over your crib, like I do so many nights, and watch you sleep with your tush up in the air. I will drink in the sweet scent of your room; the scent of you, Sweet Baby. And as I watch you, I won't be able to help flashing forward 15 years from now. I know even then, I'll stand at your door and watch you sleep; disheveled hair and size 12 feet hanging off the foot of the bed. Your room likely won't smell as sweet (I had older brothers, I know these things.) I will always wish the best for you and love you every day. I will always pray for you and be the best Mommy I can be. All I ask of you is that you always stay my baby.

I love you, Maxwell. Happy birthday, Son.

Maxwell Joseph's first year from Shannon Sinanian on Vimeo.