Monday Moments: Retro Edition

This is my son exactly one year ago today, covered in stickers from his big sister's birthday card. He nabbed them the second she put them down. Seems he was a stinker even then, but I don't really remember it.

There is another photo from that day with him covered nearly head to toe in homemade macaroni and cheese. I made some for him last week and he cried until I gave up and threw it in the garbage. Three months ago, he would do a little dance and sing, "yummy, yummy stuffing" every time I made it. Last night, he took one look at the stuffing on his plate and declared it, "Too bad," without even taking a bite.

This morning, he was looking at my tiny bag of miniature pom-poms (that I used to make the party hats for the Littlest Pet Shop birthday invitations) and asked if he could have one. I gave him a yellow one and he went over and asked me if he could haul it in his toy semi. "Sure," I said. Just a few seconds later he came up to me and told me, "Yellow one, nose!" I grabbed a Q-tip from the medicine cabinet and fished around up there, while holding his arms down and trying to hold his head at an angle I could see. Eventually it came out.

I knew it would happen some day, but I thought it would happen in kindergarten in the lunch room when some other little boy dared him, "Hey, put this pea up your nose!" I didn't think I needed to be prepared for it now.

Part of the reason I went retro today was to look for some real evidence of what a terror he was a year ago, to get a concrete feeling of "this too shall pass". It all seems so easy now though. I got bedtime kisses, I put him in a crib that he couldn't climb out of versus a toddler bed, he was strapped into a chair at dinner and would put his little hand into anything you sat in front of him. I'm sure at the time he was annoying, but I just don't remember. Which I guess is the point. Will I remember fishing craft supplies out of his nose in a year? Will I remember panicking in the Tractor Supply store as he knocked over a $600 dirt bike trying to climb on it? Will I remember him biting my rear end?

Or will I remember that time in the middle of the night he climbed up into my bed and whispered, "Beep boop, robot love you,"?