Dear Sir Bubba Pants

You did it! You are 1! To celebrate turning one, you decided to get pneumonia. That's right. On Monday, you had a super runny nose. On Tuesday you started hacking up a lung. Wednesday morning, you spiked a fever I took you to the doctor, on Thursday to find out that not only did you have a pretty sweet case of pneumonia, you got an overnight stay in the hospital. It was so much fun. After the nurses got your IV started in the crook of your arm, the IV pump decided to beep every 15 minutes until a nurse came to reset it. For the whole entire time you were hooked up. Even all night. It was awesome. I may have silenced the alarms a time or two. A student nurse may have came in and asked me how I did it. You slept good that night for the first time all week. They had started fluids and also an antibiotic. I tried to enjoy your warm body sleeping on me since you are so busy these days.

My snuggle times with you these day are few and far between. You only let me rock you to sleep maybe once a week. On the other nights you like to tornado out of my arms and off my lap, earning you a trip to your bed so you can chew and suck on your star blanket until you pass out on your own. You learned to army crawl just last week. It is fun watching you. You are such a determined little boy. You see what you want across the room and scoot your way over to it as fast as you can. Before you knew how to scoot, you would roll to your destination. Even turning the right direction for your rolling skills to get you to the correct end point. I have a bunch of pictures of you getting stuck under things. You still get stuck under a lot even with the army crawl. The only difference now is you can usually get yourself out of it! Ry and Kennel love to "lead" you places. They hold a toy that you like (usually my flip flop) in front of your face and slowly walk away from you. You, of course, follow. You love to clap, high five, and attack our cheeks with slobbery kisses. You have 2 teeth and you like to bite now too. You weighed a whopping 14 pounds at your appointment when you were sick last week. I think it's a little low since you hadn't eaten in 2 days by that time. So we have a plan for you to eat daddy's protein smoothies to get you back on track!

You like to eat some "real" food now. You like to shove so many cheerios in your mouth, you end up choking. As you choke, you are shoving more into your mouth. You like ice-cream (of course), love yogurt every morning, little pieces of my donuts, mac and cheese, and you can drink through a straw. You don't love to chew. You still try to swallow everything whole, hence the choking on cheerios. Maybe you will be our fast eater?! You love all kinds of crackers and drinking bottles especially in the middle of the night. After you have your middle of the night bottle, you pass out and I like to hold you a little extra.

I want you to know that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. You are so determined. I want you to remember that you are a fighter. You fought for this life and you don't want to skip a beat. I want you to know that you will catch up. You have only been scooting for a week and already yesterday decided to get up on your knees a few times. I want you to know that we celebrated your birthday by walking. Grandpa and Grandma Soptich, Aunt Sar, Uncle Kyle, Aunt Manda and Ellie, Miss Holly, Joanna and Roy, and your sisters and dad and I walked 3 miles with you. We did this for a lot of reasons. One is to  raise money to help babies that are born too early. I want you to know that it was the perfect way to close a roller coaster year. I want you to know you are strong. I want you to remember what it feels like to be close to your Heavenly Father. I want you to remember you will always have his strength behind you. I want you to know that we celebrate you everyday. You are our favorite brother, our powerful son, and our greatest story to tell. I want you to know that you will change people. You have been changing lives since the day you came into this world. We love you, Eli. Happy 1st Birthday.