Willow turns one on Sunday! I can't believe it's been a whole year since one of the best and worst days of my life. Oh yeah, I'm not going to lie to you. Labor was horrible; there was nothing beautiful about it either time for me. And there are still times when I look at my children's beautiful, giant heads that I get a cold shudder down my spine.

My sister used to joke that I was the Grinch Who Stole Pregnancy, but I felt like there was enough propaganda out there about the beauty of the experience; it was my job to be a living, breathing example of pregnancy's ugly dark side. I gained weight from the top of my head to, quite literally, the bottom of my feet (I went up a size and a half in shoes, and even after losing the baby weight, my feet are still as big as Christmas hams); I had non-stop morning sickness and was so hormonal that when I wasn't crying, I was breaking something ... on purpose.

But that is behind me, and my little WiFi is a daily source of hilarity and real inspiration to me. Until she came along, I didn't realize the things that Billy hadn't done as a baby. She hands me things. She pretends to talk. She learnes new words every day. Her vocabulary now includes "Mama," "Daddy," "BEE!" (Billy), "baby," "cat," "up," "ice," "buh-buh" (bottle), "Nan," "Pop," "bye," the list goes on.

And one horrifying profane word that I cannot print in this family-friendly forum. She didn't learn this word from us. This word is not one that gets spoken in our house or even when we get cut off in traffic.

No, this word is a strange example of how children learn to communicate. Willow plays with sounds, and two of her favorite words for a while were "cat" and "cook-cook" (cookie). Well, she kept playing around with variations on these words, changing the vowels around -- "cot," "bok" ... you see where this is going -- until she hit on just the right word to make Mama pop her head up and shout, "What did you say?!"

Well, it doesn't get much better than that reaction to Willow. Somewhere in her little brain, she logged this as the word that gets Mama's attention. And it does. I can't help it. I know the right reaction is to ignore it completely, but I'll be honest with you, if we're in public, I give her anything she wants to shut her up.

Yesterday, I was pushing her around the party store in the shopping cart; I had decorated her in this adorable little "Birthday Princess" crown and sash and she was smiling and happily shouting her new favorite word over and over again. People were giving me looks. So I started saying, "No, you can't have a COKE," in the hopes they would buy it. Or, "Oh, you want a COOKIE? No problem; here ya go." And she tossed the cookie down and shouted the word again. I just got out of there before anyone could call Child Services.

By the time she was born, we were already pretty sure Billy was autistic, even though we hadn't received the official medical diagnosis yet. At that point, his verbal skills were still very limited, so we didn't know how bad things would get. I didn't know if he'd ever learn to communicate and be independent or if he'd need care the rest of his life.

These days, we're very confident about the progress he's making, and feel very optimistic that within a couple of years he's going to be very close to his peers in development. But a year ago, I looked at my baby daughter and thought, You'll still be with him when we're gone. You're so small and already have such a big responsibility. I have known adults who care for adult siblings with special needs and they are unsung, uncelebrated, often unappreciated (sometimes even by those they care for) heroes.

So a year later, it does my heart good to see Billy pull his baby sister into his lap. When she sees him, she shouts, "Bee!" and "Up!" He smiles, hugs her and holds her, wrapping his big lanky body around her. When she's in the tub he says, "Willow, close your eyes. I'm going to wash your eyes," imitating the things I say to him when I wash his face. And then he gently helps me wash her hair and brush it.

It never occurred to me that he would take on the responsibility of looking after her so quickly. But he's the big brother. She's the baby sister. And with any luck, they'll spend the rest of their lives looking after one another.