6 Reasons to Love One-Year-Olds

To comfort the mama who misses her newborn.

My fourth and last baby has turned one. The squishy, snuggly, gurgly newborn stage is behind us, and I’m sad about it. To help myself cope, I’ve been contemplating all the reasons I love one-year-olds. I offer them to you in hopes that, though your experience likely was/is/will be very different from mine, we can smile and laugh together anyway.

(Spoiler: all of these reasons can be summed up with either, “It’s not as hard as other stages,” or, “They’re so stinkin’ cute it almost hurts.”)

1. Peak of cuteness.

While every parent believes their newborn baby to be the epitome of adorableness, objectively speaking, they’re usually not. Those aged man vibes fade away in the first couple of months and — hooray! — your baby becomes cute for real! By one year, the cuteness is off the charts. After four kids I can definitively declare this to be The Peak of Cuteness. Savor it, mamas: it’s downhill from here. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

2. Sleeeeeeep.

I can’t speak for all babies (or even all of my babies) but at this point, my one-year-old seems to have figured this sleep thing out. (I take no credit and have no sleep advice for you. And I’m sorry.) With several uninterrupted hours of shut-eye most nights, I have enough sanity now to enjoy my baby some of the time, instead of just existing in a fog of feedings and diapers and cat naps. Glory be.

3. Every Day is a Revelation.

My baby learned how to drink from a straw the other day. Thus far he has only ingested fluids from breasts, bottles, and sippy cups. He kept diving for my smoothie, so I held the stainless steel straw to his lips and watched him determinedly try to figure out what to do with it. I waited while he experimented for a couple of minutes, and then…success! His delight was unsurpassable. So was mine, even though my smoothie was gone.

It seems nearly every day he learns a new skill. I chuckle a little at first-time parents oohing and aahing over every little thing their baby does. But then I look at myself and realize I DO THE SAME EXACT THING. I can’t help but be astounded at this tiny person learning how to do something for the very first time. It’s okay, you can chuckle at me.

4. Solid poops (yes, I went there.)

Ahh, newborn diapers. Those were the days. Once all the tar-like meconium has worked itself out, you’re left with a benign substance that smells no worse than yogurt.

After a few months, your baby is ready to try solid foods. As fun as it is to watch your wee one learn to eat, this transition has an unfortunate consequence in terms of number two. From about six to nine months, in my experience, diaper changes become a frightful event in which you hold your breath while attempting to keep the baby from flipping over (a couple of extra arms would be nice!) and use an innumerable amount of wipes for that sticky, stinky, not-quite-liquid, not-quite-solid mess.

Much to my relief, I have found that by a year or so, especially if the kid is a big eater, their diapers’ contents start to become more solid and therefore much easier to take care of. There’s no going back to newborn poop and I still wish I had four arms, but I’ll take it.

5. First (real) words.

Sure, you think your baby has been saying “mama” since she was four months old, but by one year of age, most babies are saying words other people can recognize, too! We’ve been enjoying “that” and “buh-bye” and “shake shake shake” over here and I’m pretty sure I’m not making it up.

You know what else gets me? When babies begin to vary their babble’s inflection and they sound like they are carrying on a real conversation — though no real words may be present. Plug your ears now while I use the high-pitched voice everyone uses when they encounter something insanely cute. “My baby is da cutest baby in da whole world!”

6. It’s simple(r).

Keep them alive. Feed them, change them, keep them safe, play with them, and you’re good to go! No worries yet about potty training or education or peer pressure or bad habits or mental health.

Can it be stressful sometimes? Absolutely. Sometimes I look away for two seconds and see that my baby has pulled all the tissues out of a tissue box or dumped my quart jar of water on the floor or grabbed something dangerous that shouldn’t have been in his reach. Sometimes he is screaming for food or a clean diaper or because his nap was too short. I’m often stretched too thin trying to care for his needs and the needs of my other three kids.

Nevertheless, there is a sheer delight in parenting a one-year-old that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

I can’t go back to his newborn days or the newborn days of my three older kids. I’m allowing myself to grieve that reality. But I am also choosing to notice the joys of this stage and all the stages to come.