3 Years and A Lot of Laughs Later

I was going to link up with Cari, but I'm just not clever enough to make Dominic's birthday a knot. A knot of emotions? I'm so happy and so proud of him and so sad that my first baby is not a baby anymore.

I had a rough labor. I don't think I've written about it on the blog, maybe I did...I didn't bother going back through the archives so I'll give the cliff's notes version here. I was 41 weeks, and delivered in Garden City (2 hours away) and we were really nervous that I would go into labor and we'd not be able to make it so far so we drove up that Saturday and walked around the zoo...then we walked around Target...then Walmart. Then we ate a super yummy meal because I knew I wouldn't get to eat and I was having some pretty good and consistent contractions. I was slow at progressing and they started pitocin. I wanted a medication free labor but I was not handling the pain well. I might have gone for an epidural that night if the night nurse, upon hearing that I wanted a medication free labor/birth the night nurse told me to just order the epi then that there was no way I'd be able to handle a pitocin labor unmedicated. So I set out to prove her wrong and had the worst night of pain. Jason was so awesome, he didn't get any sleep at all, but I managed to sleep between contractions. Around 8AM on Sunday I called for the epidural and got blessed, sweet relief. I labored the rest of the day with the contractions coming hard and my epidural wore off and I was just still not progressing. Dominic's head was stuck in the birth canal for over an hour when they decided that a c-section was the best choice. We agreed. And at 5:31PM CST Dominic was born. Jason watched over the curtain and our life changed forever.

This boy is so wild, so fun, so sweet. I can't believe that his first year is gone let alone his first 3. Every moment with him is a surprise really. His vocabulary is exploding and the things he picks up on shock us and make us laugh. There is an episode of SpongeBob (remember we have DVDs so he watches the same ones often) where Gary the snail is watching a love story and the characters say "oh Monica" "oh Brad" and Dominic has started hugging us saying "oh Bwaaaatt" and waiting for us to say "oh Monica!". It's so hilarious!

He's gone through loving his brother, being annoyed at his brother, and constantly looking for his brother. When we're getting ready to leave or heading downstairs or into another room he'll yell "Christopher hurry up" (I can't phonetically spell how he says those words because it's so nuts!).

And now he is 3 years old and he's a whole little person. He likes to have people draw SpongeBob and characters for him, whether it's in the dirt on the side of the tub or on a wipe off board. He loves when you swing him around in circles and loves to be chased...oh gosh does he love to be chased. Does this ever get old for little boys?! He loves anything that makes you laugh and if you laugh hard at him he'll fake laugh and then he'll do the same thing over and over. Being outside is the best thing in the world to this kid and he is constantly asking to go on the "pooouch" (porch) or in the car or on a walk. This summer he has increased his love of the water and now recognizes when we put our swim suits on and knows that means he gets to go to the big slide and play in the water. He likes to be a fish and he will crawl on his belly in the very shallow area. Another episode of SpongeBob (don't judge ;-)) has "snail bites" snacks for Gary and Dominic sounds so adorable when he says this. Today for lunch he had shells and cheese and yep, you guessed it he called it "snail cheese". Soooo cute!