i will cherish these photos forever! my good friend christal took some photos of colsen and i around our place while she was in town visiting family. (christal also took our maternity photos when we lived in st. louis!) i am so in love with them and she captured colsen's silly smiles perfectly ;)

one of my goals this year is to take more photos of colsen and i together. i take a million photos of just colsen every day, and i have several images of kevin with colsen, but barely any of just him and me. these were taken on my iphone one day after a good photographer friend came by to visit (who took photos of colsen and i together and i'm so excited to see them!).

lately colsen has been super clingy to me and i secretly love it because then i can cuddle him all i want :) i figured i could either be annoyed by it, or enjoy this special time i have with him before he doesn't want my millions of kisses and hugs every day. something that i am incredibly thankful for is the bond that we've developed and i feel that through nursing him, it has strengthened the special bond between us. it's been tough having to deal with his allergies which means that i have to deal with it personally too - but i know that by nursing him, it is the best thing for the both of us.  i would love to nurse him past a year old, so we'll see what the future holds with that!

it's been so fun observing colsen grow, develop new skills and reach each milestone. i think his age right now has been my favorite so far (and i'll probably have a new favorite age in the future). it's my favorite because he hasn't learned to crawl yet but he's able to roll around, play with his toys on his own for some time and sit up on his own. we get him to laugh more and he is all smiles for me! we have this thing where i reach my hands out to him and say "up!" and he'll grab on to my hands and i'll pull him up to a standing position and he loves it! it's little things that we do together that make motherhood so joyful.

since becoming a mother, i've definitely learned some lessons about taking care of a baby. before our little guy arrived, i thought i knew all about taking care of babies - i did a lot of babysitting when i was younger. i learned quickly that it's way different when it's your own baby! motherhood is hard and fun and tiring and joyful and the list goes on! but most of all, motherhood is a work in progress and definitely has a learning curve ;) so to either humor you or maybe these will help you in some ways, here's my latest lessons learned:

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