In three-ish weeks, everything and nothing changes. For one, this Little Dude will be one and while that won’t really be much different from where we are today, I can see the leaps and bounds and growth spurts looming on his horizon.

Two more teeth looking to poke through the upper gums? Yep. Starting to hitch up on hands and knees in a full crawl position instead of just doing his (super freaky fast) army crawl? Totally. And starting to pull himself up on anything and anyone he can, meaning that many bumps and bruises and whoopseedasies are in our near future? Definitely.

And even though it has been darn near a year, I can still look at him sometimes and think OHMYGOSH! Who is this sweet babe?! Is he really ours? Do we really have four kids?! (no, really – I think this all the time when I look at my kids all chasing or rolling on top of or wrestling each other – we have an active little herd) Who is this little person packed full of great big personality?!

Last night was one of those moments. Ben was putting the other three kids to bed and I was hanging out with Trumy and he’s just suddenly such a person. He laughs socially and totally, I kid you not, played a game of catch (toss? roll? you get the idea) with me yesterday afternoon. He adores his Bigs and he makes the best ba-liddle-liddle noises.

And just like that, as TJ zooms from one development to the next, he’s leaving infancy in the dust. OK, perhaps I’m being a smidge bit dramatic here. It’s not like he’s leaving for college next week, but crap, his oldest big brother is already in first grade which means (it will feel like) he IS leaving for college next week!

In truth, I don’t want these days to last forever. I’m too excited to see who my kids become and what they do in this world to wish them to stay little forever (and also too tired, sheesh). But that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for the leaps and bounds to just chill the eff out from time to time because, dang, these babies are cute.