No more babies in this house

Ian has been wrestling his brothers since he could crawl over them at five months. Running after them and trying to steal their toys since 10 months. Gave up baby food to eat real food like them right about one year, and didn't look back when his bottle disappeared one day in favor of sippy and staw cups.

Now he has  the beginnings of pretty consistent words: mama and dada interchangeably for me or Greg; "uya" (kuya) and "bubba" for his brothers; "bawa" for Bagwelle; "EE-YA!" For Lea; "la-na" for "no more?" (corruption of Tagalog walang-na); "MMM!" combined with knocking on the fridge for either milk or yogurt.  Lea says he has some other Tagalog words, but not understanding Tagalog myself, it's hard for me to know :)

My last baby seems to be in a hurry to not be a baby and to catch up with his kuyas.  In fact, I really shouldn't be calling him baby-ko ("my baby") any more.

According to Christmas cards, 2013 is the year of the baby - about 3/4 of the cards we received either have a new baby pic or announcement of one (or two!) on the way.  Two years ago, while we were still debating a #3, this would have made me a bit sad (growing up, I'd always pictured having four children - well, honestly, four daughters - and I was having a hard time convincing Greg that more really is better when it comes to kids).  But, after Ian's surprise arrival, and finding myself not feeling nostalgic at all about his brazen rush to become a little boy, my thought looking at all the photos is: don't worry, friends, your life will be upside down for the next two years (or maybe longer, depending for how long you keep having kids), but it only gets more fun as they get bigger and can talk and think abstractly.