Oh hi hello today my first-born turns TEN which means I’ve been a mom for a decade.

Evan’s birth story post part 1 and part 2 / Evan’s First Birthday / Second Birthday / Third Birthday / Fourth Birthday / Fifth Birthday / Evan turns six / Evan turns seven (I didn’t blog this? weird) / Evan turns eight / Evan turns nine

Getting pregnant with my first baby is what inspired me start this blog, and why it’s called bebehblog. The 2008 internet was a much different place than the 2019 internet, and blogging my thoughts about pregnancy and new motherhood was often my only connection to ANYONE who had been through those things. I didn’t even own a smartphone when Evan was born.

I am incredibly thankful that I have the last decade documented, even the super TMI embarrassing stuff. The older Evan gets the less he wants shared in this space and I am totally find with that. Ten seems REALLY old – I clearly remember my own tenth birthday party and my thoughts and fears and inner dialogs and how I started to worry so much about social situations and clothes and all that stuff. I’m hoping Evan is spared some of that because he’s a boy, but I want to be prepared and available if he does start to feel anxious.

At ten, Evan is a soft-hearted weirdo. He loves to read and build Legos and play video games. He takes trumpet lessons at school and he’s excellent at karate. He has zero fashion sense and couldn’t care less about his hair. He is very kind to his brothers and sister and still loves to cuddle.

This morning when I went into his room to say “Happy Birthday!” I made a point to pick Evan up, like he was still a toddler, because I once read something that said “One day, you’ll put him down and won’t ever pick him up again” and I figured I didn’t want that day to be anytime before today. Having a big kid is both amazing and terrifying and I am looking forward to being his mom for many many more decades.

Evan through the years: Birth Day (part 1 and part 2), one, two, three, four, five, six, seven (oops, that one doesn’t exist?), eight

Happy birthday to my firstborn, who is somehow nine years old today even though I could have sworn he was born just last week. Now he’s NINE.

For the last nine years I have made an average of 253 mistakes a day, used my angry voice, yelled, threatened, failed to follow through, was incredibly inconsistent, offer the wrong kind of praise, didn’t enforce bedtimes, let him get away with bad behavior, couldn’t figure out how to make him eat most vegetables and pretended I didn’t notice he was playing on his tablet longer than he was supposed to. And yet somehow, Evan is still a wonderful kid. He’s sensitive and deeply empathetic – he cried during both Coco and Guardians of the Gallaxy Vol 2. He can be hesitant to try new things but he isn’t ashamed to be himself. He wants nothing more than to be treated as a responsible, trustworthy child who is allowed to stay home by himself for 30 minutes at a time. He loves small kids and babies and big kids and adults and everyone in between. He still fully believes in Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.

There is so much more I am going to do wrong when it comes to raising this child, but let’s hope heaps and heaps of love is enough to balance all those mistakes. This is my first time raising a 9-year-old, it’s pretty scary and wonderful. Happy Birthday Evan!

Caroline is Seven!

Her favorite things are: cheer, dance, fashion, drawing, writing, reading, Wonder Woman, cooking, baking, her brothers, her friends, unicorns, glitter, Hamilton and making videos.

She is very, very smart, a wonderful friend, kind to everyone and makes me coffee in the morning. Caroline plans to have a streak of purple added to her hair over winter vacation. She cannot wait until she is old enough to officially babysit.

Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.

I wasn’t going to do a birthday video for Lincoln because of his speech delay. He’s very hard to understand – even his siblings and I have trouble with his language on a daily basis and we “speak Lincoln”. He also doesn’t have words for a lot of things he might want to say, and I didn’t want him to get frustrated and have a break down because he couldn’t communicate. I didn’t want to make him cry just so I could have a video of him answering questions.

But Linc has made HUGE progress with his speech, thanks to months of Birth to Three services and our amazing therapist Jill. He’s had his hearing checked (perfect), a physical (nothing wrong), and he’s been accepted into the early pre school program this fall so he can continue getting direct speech services as well as work on some of his sensory stuff and be ready for regular pre school when he’s 4. I know that in the next 12 months he’s going to grow and improve SO MUCH and eventually I’m going to miss the days when every new word was a celebration and hearing him say “happy burse day” makes me jump for joy.

So we made the video. I shortened my list of questions a little, he asked to have Evan sit with him, and I did a lot of translating. You probably won’t understand what he’s saying. But turning three is a big deal and milestone that we won’t let a speech delay stop us from documenting.