At What Point Will I Wake Up...

...And realize this has all been a dream?

There's no way I'm really planning a first birthday party. For MY child. Nuh uh. No way.

A year later - seven months past finalization - and I still find myself in brief moments of bewilderment. Once in a while I walk into Aidan's room and I'm shocked to see a crib in there.

Obviously I know he's ours and it's not that I worry otherwise. I just can't seem to move completely out of the realm of "surprised to have a kid on my hip." Adoption related PTSD? Ha! I suppose it's gotten better over time though, so hopefully that will continue.

Back to the party - I'm very proud of us for not going too crazy. I think everyone thought after what we've been though, we would spend hundreds of dollars on his birthday. Not so!  So far we only bought him one gift, and it's one I'm not sure he can even use right away.  (We are both dying for him to be ready for Legos, so we bought him this:

You can see the age range is 1-1/2 years to 5... I'm thinking it'll be a couple months yet before he's ready.  But we were so very excited to buy his very first Legos!  He has tons of clothes, so we're good there, and so we are trying really hard not to buy him more stuff for his birthday.  There are only a few places in this small town that carry toys and stuff, and I know grandparents and relatives and friends will want to spoil him to death... so we're going to let them!

I may try to find him a new piggy bank.  The one in his room now is pink (a remnant from Allie), which would be fine if it was - like - piglet pink.  But it's pretty much girly pink.  I'll either get him a green one to match the color I intend to paint his room, or something.  All the money people gave Allie for her baby shower and/or arrival is still in the pink bank, so I'll just transfer it over and so begins his fun-money fund.  (His college fund is already started, too, in the bank.)

Today I ordered Aidan's first birthday cake.  So surreal.  Again, for a fleeting second, it seemed like I was doing it for someone else, not for MY son.  What a wonderful moment!  I got a white cake with raspberry filling and the buttercream frosting will be decorated with white, blue and yellow in keeping with the Mickey's 1st Birthday theme we chose for the party.  It comes with a "baby block," a miniature cake decorated to match the big one.  I can't wait to watch him attack it.

Speaking of attacking things, Aidan finally got tired of being prodded about walking this past weekend and just finally DID IT!  After spending a few days experimenting with standing up without holding on to anything (and looking SO excited and SO proud as he did so)...  He took three steps totally unassisted on Sunday night!  I can't believe it - I have a little walker.  When did this happen?  He also started repeating words over the weekend.  He'd been saying "mama" and "dada" for quite a while, but we couldn't really get anything else out of him.  Imagine our surprise, then, when he spit out "grandma" on Saturday, and later, "car."  WHOA!  He's starting to become a little person, not a baby!!

As the days tick by - we now have less than two weeks til his first birthday - I find the excitement building in my heart.  So many milestones have already been reached; this will be a wonderful celebration to welcome a whole new batch of accomplishments.

And even more reasons to be so grateful to be a mom... to be Aidan's mom.

If I can ever actually believe it completely.