And just like that, he’s one. A whole year old. Yesterday I looked at the first photos we took of him — that wrinkled, purple, cone-headed little beauty with his treacle-slow limbs and his crooked stare. He looks exactly the same and nothing at all alike.
A year on, he needs a haircut. His hair is blonder than expected, and curling from the bottom while the top still sticks straight up, waving in the wind like down. He has seven teeth. He’s working on running and jumping and dancing and clapping. This morning, Diogo rubbed my arm and then Nico reached over and rubbed it too. Last night we discovered that if we give him the cloth, he’ll try and wipe down his highchair himself.
He doesn’t say anything but “mama” and “dada” and they both mean all sorts of things, but he’s having a concerted effort at “hello” (because everything from the remote to a stray sock is a phone this week), and it’s obvious he understands at least some of what we say now. (“Take that to Papai” is my new favourite phrase, especially with the most painful of his books.)
He’s happy pretty much all the time and almost all of his favourite toys are books — both these things make me feel like we must be doing something right. He loves people, animals, his two days at daycare, climbing onto and into anything dangerous, and pointing at things and saying “da!”. He’s hilarious and exhausting and charming and exasperating in equal measure.
Every night we lie in bed and say to each other “I want him to stay this big forever” and “I can’t wait to see what he does next”.
He’s pretty much a total fucking delight.
Happy first birthday, Nico pico bumble bum. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
