Dear Isaac,

Back when your sister was a baby, I used to write a letter every month documenting all her accomplishments and providing copious photos of her every smile, wiggle and scoot. When I got pregnant with you, a few people asked me if I was going to write you letters too. I am pretty sure I said yes. I mean, why wouldn't I? What could possibly prevent me from doing the same thing for you that I did for your sister?

I really have no idea how these people kept from laughing directly in my face.

Because here we are, less than one month from your first birthday, and if I actually manage to finish writing this letter and hit "publish" before your turn two, it will be the first letter I have written for you in your life to date, not to mention the only completed piece of writing I have turned out in a couple of months. We should probably just print it out and call it your baby book, since I think we all know I don't make those anyway. Obviously there is a lot of ground to cover.

When we are out in public with you, the most frequent thing people say to us is some version of "Wow, that is the happiest baby I have ever seen." And it's true. I've been waiting for months for you to snap out of it and start acting like a normal fussy baby, but apparently you just really are that happy. I am thankful that you are my second born. If you had been my first, I surely would have thought I was the world's most amazing mother. Why else would you be so content, so happy, so joyous about everything? Yes, it's a good thing I have your sister to keep me humble. Six months into my parenting experience with her, I was deeply in love but knew that I was also in way over my head. I still feel that way most days, probably because everything she does represents a first both for her and for me. Trying to keep things in perspective is the ongoing work of my life as her parent. But I must be making some progress, because with you I have found myself more able to relax and have fun.

Since you are a second child, there is no end to the ways in which we constantly compare you to your sister. I'm sorry. I've heard this is bad for kids if you do it in a competitive way, but that's not how we're doing it. We're just continually fascinated by how different you are from your sister, both by personality and by virtue of being a boy. I am currently contemplating taking every book and knick knack off every shelf in this house lower than three feet from the floor due to your overwhelming desire to plunder. If you see it, you must put your hands on it and preferably put it in your mouth. Lately, once you've done that, your next move is to start hitching your foot up to see if you can climb it. Your sister made some messes in her day, but she could also be pretty easily deterred by a simple "No no." You are deterred by nothing, and your favorite phrase to mimic is "No no no" (which you pronounce "Na Na Na."), probably because you hear it constantly. At least you smile when you say it. In related news, we purchased the first baby gates we ever owned in our parenting lives shortly after we moved into this house. We just never really needed one for Kate. For you, we have no purchased two. That about sums it up.

Which brings me to the next most noticeable thing about you aside from your pervading happiness: You are the most patient, persistent baby I have ever seen. We are probably biased, but we are starting to suspect you are pretty smart. If you're working on something, be it figuring out how to stack blocks or trying out a new motor skill, you will sit in one place and do it over and over and over again until it works. You don't fuss when you get frustrated. You are not easily distracted. You especially want to know how things work. The other day I found you lying on floor with your cheek pressed against the cold tiles so that you could get a good look at the wheels on the bottom of your walker. First you would touch the wheels, then you would sit up and push the walker a little and watch it roll. Then you'd get back down on the ground and study the wheels again. A friend of ours from Albuquerque tells us that he was like this as a child and that it will all be fun and games until you arm yourself with tools and starting taking things apart to gain further insight into how they work. I don't doubt it. And I will be hiding the toolbox at least until you get pretty good at putting things back together.

For such a little person, you are also very independent, and this part of your personality intersects with your patience level to create what could best be described as a quiet stubborn streak the size of the Grand Canyon. The best example of this I can think of would be the Great Spoon Standoff. Here's how it went. Sometime around six months, I started feeding you baby food. That went OK for a few weeks and then you started refusing any more food. Would not have anything to do with it. That was fine with me since we were pretty busy anyway and it's not like I would want to eat pureed squash either, so I would wait a few weeks and then try again. But I never got any better results. Over and over again, I would present a spoonful of food and you would turn your head, clamp your little mouth shut and that was that. Around the time we moved into our new house, I just gave up entirely on trying to give you solids. It wasn't worth the time and the mess involved. But occasionally, to keep you occupied while I did something else, I would put you in your chair and give you some little finger foods to toy with. And lo and behold if you didn't eat those right up, you little stinker. I have to give the credit to your daddy on this one, because sometime around February he said "You know, I think what he really hates is you feeding him with a spoon. If he can pick it up himself, he'll eat it." And he was right. As soon as you mastered the art of feeding yourself, you readily embraced solid food. Cheese, bread, pasta, meat, you'll eat just about anything that can be cut into tiny bite sized pieces. But yogurt? Nope, it comes on a spoon. Applesauce? Spoon. No. Oddly, your prejudice does not extend to forks. You love forks. Right now, you want to sit in your chair with a fork and try to spear pieces of food for yourself. You pick food up with your hand and then try to put it on the fork. You get about one out of every ten pieces into your mouth, but if I know you, you'll be eating proficiently with a fork in a matter of weeks. But definitely not a spoon.

You are a speed demon of a crawler, but as of this moment you don't show a lot of interest in walking. We've noticed that you can let go and stand by yourself perfectly well. You can also walk really fast when we hold onto your hands. But I think crawling is serving you so well that you just don't see the point in trying to walk. The only problem with your extended crawling phase is that you are constantly finding things on the floor and then putting them directly in your mouth. Maybe I should be thankful that only one terrible thing has happened as a result of this. Last month when we visited Gam and Geez and the family in Mississippi, you somehow managed to pick up a wasp off the floor and put it in your mouth before I could stop you. The look of horror on your face when you go stung on the inside of the mouth was the only thing more upsetting than having to shove my fingers in your mouth to retrieve a mostly-dead wasp covered in spit. But another interesting thing we have learned about you is that you have a really high pain tolerance, and in a few minutes you were back to playing while sporting a fat lip. Meanwhile I hyperventilated and sat on hold with the nurse line to find out what in the world one does about insect bites on the inside of the mouth. I notice that every time I tell this story to the parent of a boy, they nod knowingly and say something to the effect of "Oh, just wait." It is not reassuring.

Speaking of little boys, here is a photo of you with your cousin Clark. Your Geez has nicknamed the two of you in the grand tradition of the Rice family. You are Buddy. Clark is Possum. So I think you got the better end of that deal. True story: Recently when your Geez was out in public with Clark and his parents Aaron and Kelly, he walked up to Clark and said "Hi, Possum!" A woman who was walking past them overheard this and turned to her husband to say "Did he just call that baby Possum?"

The most rewarding part of the last couple of months for your dad and I has been seeing your relationship with your sister start to emerge. Having had little brothers myself, I know that there's going to come a day when the two of you fight, and we've already had some pretty serious skirmishes over toys. But on the list of the most adorable things I have ever seen in my life is your pure giddy joy every morning when I get you out of bed and we head down the hall to Kate's room. She's usually talking or singing in there and as soon as you hear her, you start bouncing up and down in anticipation of the moment when we open the door. You throw yourself down on the bed and climb all over her and roll back and forth on the bed giggling. Kate laughs and that makes you laugh even more. Some days I have to break up the party after ten minutes or so just so we can go get some breakfast. It is not at all a bad way to start the day.

About this time last year, as I was getting into the final weeks of my pregnancy with you, I remember having an emotional meltdown fueled by my sadness that a really special time in our lives was ending -- the last of our days as a family of three. In the fall and winter and spring when we waited for you, a completely unknown new person, I found myself really wanting to hold on to our last moments of the way things were. I am glad that I really did soak up that time. Back then I thought that the only major change on the horizon was you. What I didn't know was that within six months of your arrival, we were going to sell our house, leave the town and the church and the friends that made up the backdrop of our entire life as a family and move to a new state. I think in some ways God was letting me begin to grapple with the idea of change long before I really knew what was coming. Don't misunderstand me: We were thrilled to know you were coming and prayed and hoped for you. But although I felt guilty about it, I had this small worry in my heart because I knew you would change everything.

I was right about part of that. You changed our family forever. But also on the list of things-I-didn't-know-then was what a joy and a comfort you would be when the real upheaval started. You started smiling your first real smiles around the time we put our house on the market. By the time we went to San Antonio you were sitting up and scooting. There were weeks upon weeks of unpacking and feeling like we were camping out amid piles of our own belongings. My natural inclination at times like that is to want to work and work until everything feels normal again, and to wish that I could blink my eyes and be past it all. But knowing that your babyhood was passing before my eyes forced me to just slow down, enjoy you and cherish even the hard days. We got sick a ton this winter and struggled with feeling isolated and lonely and missing so many friends. Watching you and Kate grow brought some much-needed joy and redemption to days that were otherwise pretty tough.

On this side of everything I was afraid of a year ago, I see how unbelievably good God was to give you to me just when he did. I am so thankful for every minute of this year we have had with you. You are just what we needed.

I love you,
Mama