What happened to this year?

As I sit here on the bathroom floor in our hotel room (ah, the glamor of sharing a hotel room with a baby), I can hardly believe that our Madison year is over. Over. I turned in the keys to our house this afternoon and we leave for our Chicago vacation tomorrow. I would say it seems like yesterday that we pulled up to our new Wisconsin home, but frankly all of last summer is one big blur. I've been thinking about how completely insane we were to move across the country with a week-old baby. At the time, we met the "What are you THINKING?" looks with a self-deprecating smile and, "We don't know enough to know better." Well, now we do.

I almost got teary today when I was washing windows and found a recent Hannah handprint. So many memories in this house in such a short time. I just can't believe how different she is now from a year ago. Then she was just a little lumpy eating machine (alternating with sleeping and pooping). Now she's anything but a lump- if she's awake, she's on the move. She loves food, but we can't keep her still enough to let the calories accumulate. Her one year checkup put her in the 10th percentile for weight.

She is so funny and social. Her new tricks include putting her arms over her head when someone says, "How big is Hannah? Soooo big!"; laughing along with the joke when everyone else laughs; signing "more" (which is her Smurf word- the all-purpose sign for anything she's trying to communicate); going up and down stairs; dragging her blankie around everywhere, Linus-style; and playing the harmonica while dancing to her own beat.

So many stages have come and gone so quickly. She consistently sleeps through the night. Crawling is a thing of the past. So is her milk-drunk expression after a feeding (for that matter, breastfeeding is very nearly through). We used to be able to contain her with a bouncy seat or a swing (or just setting her on the floor); now we need gates and barricades. She's awfully close to being able to climb on the couch and has already learned to cruise the edges of the dining table for tantalizing items.

I knew that babies change quickly, but I never thought a one-year-old would be more like a little girl than a baby. But every day she learns more, grows more and does more on her own. Sometimes she'll grab my finger when we walk and other times she'll do the limp baby trick if I try to hold her hand. She is a wonder, a source of laughter, a sweet sleepy snuggle (only when she's VERY sleepy), a nonstop playmate and almost never a source of frustration. I know I started out writing about Madison, but I can't separate the town from my first year with Hannah. I think of the seasons in terms of what she did and what we did with her- from meeting Nick's new co-workers at the bar last July (Hannah slept the whole time) to having one last get-together with those now-friends at the Concert on the Square last week (Hannah didn't stop running until we strapped her down in the car seat for a breather). Summer was sleepless, fall was personality emerging, winter was sitting and crawling, and spring was exploring and communicating. And it was all wonderful.

Madison was an unexpected chapter, far from family, a loooong winter and a steep learning curve on many fronts, but it was also the beginnings of our family, an exciting place to explore, a time of much personal and professional growth, and a place we can't wait to visit again. We'd do it all over in a heartbeat. (I think- like I said, I don't really remember last summer.)

Here's parting shot of Hannah's cobbled-together nursery: her beautiful wooden name letters, hand-me-down changing table and dresser, Craigslist rocker, crib and bedding, crazy neon Japanese mobile. There's a difference between possessions and love, right?