Today, Sebastian is 1 year old. It’s been a completely amazing ride so far and I can’t wait to see the coming years. I would venture to say we’re doing pretty good as parents so far but if we do have any failings, loving him with everything we’ve got is not one of them. He really makes it easy ya know? He’s turned out to be such a happy-go-lucky kid and I hope that he always stays that way. There’s an easy sentiment to him, people love being around him, and you know there’s just a great spirit within. He has easily been the best thing to happen to me (right alongside finding my soul mate in Magda). He is simply the product of great love and I feel blessed every day that God saw us fit to have him in our life. I hope that we forever do well by that blessing, that we guide him in the right way to make him the best person he can be. That is my prayer - that God grant us His grace to do well in this great blessing he has given us…

Happy Birthday, Son! We love you very much!

Sebastian continues to grow at a tremendous rate. We just passed the 6-month mark a few days ago and I can see a marked difference in his rate of understanding. Just a few days ago he started holding himself up through a sitting position. He’s decidedly good at even holding himself straight up now. The progress is absolutely stellar and I say that from a completely blind point of view. I’m not sure exactly where he’s supposed to be on the chart (at least not off the top of my head) but I feel like he is progressing well. His cough is staying with him though it seems drier now. At the very least the never-ending-runny-nose seems to have stopped leaking. We are no doubt helped by the mild weather at this point - it’s so not late December weather - but I’m thankful for the reprieve.

Another thing that he’s doing well is generating a more varied syllable set. The pa-pa - da-da things seem to be coming through more. He had started about a week and a half a go, but then stopped after one day of doing it. A few days ago he picked it back up and has been doing it for at least two days solid now, which is good. I will probably start reading to him to encourage faster verbal development. I should have been doing it earlier or like I had started to during the pregnancy but such are the time constraints (bad Daddy! bad Daddy!). Now that I want to impress upon him the idea of “sleep time” it is probably a good idea to start reading to him to help with that transition. And it’s much needed as the last two nights have had him waking up every hour or so for no reason that I can see…not normal at all and by tomorrow the underbelly of my eyes might start going black (more so on my wife’s part as she has to get up and feed).

Sebastian rolled over from his stomach to his back today. I can’t relate the excite I felt as I watched him do this. Just moments before I had helped him go from back to stomach to encourage leg and arm movement at the appropriate angles to achieve the rollover. Crazy how such a simple act holds so much importance. The amount of progress he’s making is staggering and I can easily see growing consciousness in his eyes with each passing day. Daily, though, it is his smile that steals the show - if you’ve seen his pictures on flickr, you know what I mean.