One Year Olds

I’ve learned a lesson in the past month or so.

This is it:  One year olds are a lot of work!


Go ahead and laugh.  The humor of this lesson is not lost on me.

I have eight children and I just figured out that one year olds are a lot of work.

My baby is now 16 months old.  I’ve never had one this age and not been pregnant.  Most of the time I’ve been pregnant well before my baby turned one year old.  I always thought it was the pregnancy that made life seem crazy and it never occurred to me that the age of my baby contributed to that feeling.  Truly, I thought that a one year old, by themselves, would be a piece of cake.

I was wrong.   One year olds are all the wonderful things I’ve always associated with them:  cuddly, adorable, energetic, sweet, fun, the list goes on.  But they are also a lot of work.  They hold your legs and scream to be held, they climb up on things, break things, spill things and make incredible messes.  They want to be independent but they’re not really safe.  They bounce back and forth between baby and emerging toddler.  They start throwing fits when they can’t explain what they want.  They’re cutting molars, and their behavior is still the wild card in the family (ok, maybe the teenagers are wild cards too).  But oh, they are wonderful!

The Christmas that just passed was the 15th Christmas my husband and I have spent together.  It was also my first Christmas of my married life that I haven’t been pregnant, nursing, or both.  The funny thing is, life isn’t as easy as I thought it would be, because I have a one year old.  On our recent trip and just like she’s been for the past few months, our littlest was a LOT of work.   Happy work, but still work.  Enough work that you never really sit down and relax.

But it’s still my favorite age.  Could someone please push pause so I can enjoy her like this just a bit longer?

Hopeful Homemaker