One year, and then some...

Well, it happened. Haley turned one! How is that possible? It seems like yesterday that Sondra told me we were going to have a baby. I remember how shocked and scared and excited and nervous I was. How could I be a father? I am not responsible enough. Well, responsible or not, the months passed, and Haley came. How exciting! And now a year has come and gone since she was born. One year of diapers. One year of messy, stinky, diapers! One year of getting up two or three times a night. One year of bath times. One year of getting her dressed, sometimes just to get her undressed because of diapers. One year of fun, and joy, and happiness that I couldn't have imagined. One year of firsts that you wouldn't think about (first cereal, first drink of water, first bite of "grown-up" food, first time to sleep through the night, first family walk, first trip out of Utah.) And all the other firsts that came too like first tooth, first time to roll over, first time to sit up, first time to crawl, first time to walk, first time to say mamma and dadda. It has been a wonderful year. Haley has been a real joy, and it is so much fun to see her grow. It is so good to see how much she loves her mom. They get along really well. We both are very thankful for Sondra.










We had a first birthday party for Haley. It was at her Aunt Caroline's. We had a lot of family members there. Ryan and Caroline's family was there, of course, as was Barry and Alice's family, and Greg and Rebecca's family. We had some cute decorations for the birthday princess. Haley got her own free first birthday cake from Albertson's. It was a bigger cake than I expected. We let her dig into it by herself. At first she didn't know what to do. Or maybe she knew what she wanted to do but didn't think she could. But once she got started, she really made a mess of things. She also got to play with her cousins and uncles and aunts. She had a pretty pink birthday girl dress on (but not during cake time). Of course she was spoiled with many presents.






The spoiling of Haley Sanders only got worse after that. Because not many days later came Christmas. I think her birthday was a good warm up for Christmas. Because by Christmas she was beginning to understand what we do with those pretty wrapped-up presents that we hand her. At first, on her birthday, she wasn't exactly sure what to do. But, at the end of Christmas, she was a present unwrapping expert. It was fun to see her get excited to open another present, and then to see her want to play with what she opened. The unwrapping of the presents had to be sped up, because she wanted to keep playing with each new present for several minutes, and that was going to take quite a while. I think we finished in under two hours.