Happy Birthday to Maddie!!!

Our Family

Maddie and the boys

Hangin with my friends while I unwrap my present

Reaching to touch the candle

My first taste of cake, and so dainty am I!

We can NOT believe its been a year since our little sweetness came into this world! 

We now love like we have never loved before. Its funny, Josh and I were talking the other night, and you really don't "get it" until you have a child. This crazy, "Ill do anything for you" "Ill give my life in a second" "sleep, who needs sleep" "shower, who needs a shower" "food, who needs to eat". Everything changes the moment you look into those crazy eyes that are screaming "what the heck! Who just pulled me out of my nice little dark warm world! Now you're gonna pay with sleepless nights, creative rock-a-bye dances all night long, and lots of poo diapers!" And pay we did. 

Looking back on this year, you never remember the tough stuff though. Its all the incredible moments that stick out in your mind like the first diaper, and how incredibly cute Josh looked trying to get her little cheeks up in the air high enough to wipe her lil brown buns, and the first time she locked eyes with us and how the whole world stops, and you hold your breath because the moment is just numbingly surreal, and then the first time she smiles, and I don't care if people say "its just gas" its a smile damn it, just give us that for gods sake. I carried her for nine months, don't swipe a genuine "there's my mamma" smile that makes all I endured for near a year worth it all, away. Then you get home and it gets hard, and there's a lot that no one tells you about, and your marriage gets tested...really tested, but it brings you back around and closer to one another too. To witness Josh become a father, and as a father has been like watching someone become what they were meant to be all their life. Fatherhood fits him, and he is outstanding with Maddie and they have this special, secret bond between the two of them. I know for a fact she already wants to marry him. Her gorgeous little green eyes just sparkle and glimmer with excitement any time I say his name, and she immediately begins searching the room for him. He has taken every tough time, every trial, and really stepped up when I needed him the most. All that just makes me wanna have more babies with this man!

Madelyn is pure Joy through and through and this year has been the most rewarding year of our entire lives. Its funny how this little romance between us and Maddie, its all give-give, and no where else will you ever find a relationship so one sided where one person just gives, and gives and gives all the love and affection they possibly can while the other side just takes, takes, and takes, and will probably never reciprocate the love and affection as much as we'd like, and will never love us as much as we love her. But she has taught us everything about being parents for the first time. It was just her and us and we got through it all together and there just couldn't be a more blessed two people on this earth.