A whole year

So I decided to separate this post (the sappy emotional one) from the account of Wessy's birthday party for the sake of purity and also because there is just so. much. to. say.

Wessy is a whole year old!  It's so, so wonderful.  We love him so, so much.  It's a horrible cliche but I can't believe he is already one.

I said in a previous post that I would punch the next person who tells me it goes so fast in the face, and I stand by that.  But, okay, whoever you are, you have a point.  Just don't tell me about it.

A year ago today our little guy popped out covered in vernix and ready to breastfeed.  He came out with such a wise and calm face.  He seemed to have the baby thing down pat from the get-go. He breastfed like a champ, slept even better and had the most phenomenal baby smell.

 I really think that was his first gift to me--being so good and so sweet right from the start.  Throughout my pregnancy, I struggled to connect with the idea of becoming a mother, and when he came early I felt like I had lost the last few days I was counting on to help get myself in the right frame of mind.  But, as I should have known, babies don't care when you're ready, they just come.  I suppose that even though I wasn't ready, Wessy was.  Because he was calm and soft and when I put him to my breast for the first time he was like, oh hai pretty lady, FINALLY you're gonna let me breastfeed.

The ensuing months have only shown me more and more that Wessy is his own little creature and that  we are not really creating who he is as much as getting to know him.  Looking back at him in the pictures from those first sweet days, my first thought is waaaaaaaaaah mah little baybeee, but my second thought is wow, that's HIM.  That's our guy en route to becoming the snuggly little hellion that we now know.

I still feel like we don't really know him.  This may have something to do with the fact that for the most part he doesn't talk.  Except for mama.  He loves to say mama.  Except he doesn't say a cute little two syllable ma-ma.  He says MAAAAAAM!! MAAAAAAM!!!  But I digress.  As I said, I feel there is still so much mystery and so much to know about Wessy.

For example, Wessy and I have been going to pool a lot lately.  I really want him to learn how to swim at an early age, so I have been doing mini swim lessons with him at lovely public pool less than a mile from our house.  He is finally getting big enough and is able to do enough to show some of who he is and he is BRAVE.  Despite not being able to stand on his own, he will hold onto my hands for support to get to a standing position and then he will wait for me to count to three and will jump in.  Often his head will go under.  And he loves it.

Sometimes I will gently dunk him to try and get him to figure out about his own buoyancy.  That is still a work in progress, but his good humor shows through.  Sometimes I dunk him and he stays under for two or three seconds until I lift him out of the water.  He generally does well, but sometimes he is caught off guard and comes up sputtering.  Even then, he will just cough a few times and then look at me like, okay then, let's get on with it.

Having Wessy has made me a much happier person.  I said in my graduation speech from residency that he taught me what life is worth.  That sounds very overwrought, but I said it because it feels true to me.  There is something in my life now that gives everything else warmth and color and weight.  There is something to which I have become so attached that thinking of leaving this world hurts more than it used to.  There is a new depth to my existence that I didn't know was possible.

Wessy gives my life more meaning and he gives me dirty pampers and love bites and sleep hangovers and I LOVE IT ALL.  I sleep much less and I am in worse shape and hate to say it but Stevo and I bicker more now but I LOVE IT ALL.  I am so, so glad you are here with us Wessy.  Thank you for being our boy.  Happy birthday.

A very happy birthday!

Today was the big day--Wessy's birthday!  The big oh-one.  He started the day as he usually does, which is to say clinging to the side of his crib while screeching with glee.  Once we fetched him, he was off to complete his daily but quite critical mission of circumnavigating the house and inspecting all tiny, breakable, expensive or otherwise precious objects he can find.  

After that, we got ready for church and rode our bikes there.  Wessy rode in his little throne on the back of the cargo bike.  Usually we put Wes in the nursery but today we kept him with us so that we could bring him to the front during announcements to announce his birthday.  It was a rough few minutes trying to keep him reasonably quiet waiting for the announcements, but fortunately we had made it a little easier on ourselves by arriving twenty minutes late in the first place.  

When the announcements came, we brought Wessy to the front and told the congregation that today was his first birthday!  He was awed by looking at the congregation and seemed to really enjoy it when they sang the Irish Blessing.  The pastor additionally mentioned that Wessy had been the first baby he had baptized when he came to our church.  I had been waiting for that moment for many months so I could trot our little guy out in front of everyone and say it was his birthday and it was very sweet.

After church, Wessy hit the hay and Mommy and Daddy got ready for the party.  We had a handful of friends over--nothing huge but I did want to make sure and do something.  We sat in the back yard and ate snacks and had drinks and talked.  Wessy sat in the middle of the circle of chairs for a while and provided the entertainment.  

After awhile it was time for cake!  Mommy made a carrot cake and Daddy made the frosting.  I put animal crackers and blueberries on top, a perhaps somewhat nontraditional choice, but I knew that Wessy would like them.  He was a little puzzled by the cake at first....

But he soon figured out how it works!

After cake, we opened presents.  We asked people not to bring anything since we were moving and frankly we are really trying to limit the poundage of plastic detritus in our house, but one person didn't get the memo and I did get Wessy one special thing as did Geraldine.  Wessy, as expected, was much more interested in the wrapping paper than the actual presents, but he liked those too.  

Luckily, the present-bearer brought several great children's books, which we were very glad to have.  I got Wessy a San Francisco Recycling truck in homage to his deep and abiding love for the garbage trucks which trundle outside our window on Wednesday mornings.  And Geraldine got him a "clock" which has a million buttons to push that sing songs and count numbers and who knows what else.  Wessy loved all of it but he was especially enthralled by the clock.  He held it up to his face and turned it over and inspected it to see where the voices were coming from.  Then he babbled directly at the clock face, no doubt in earnest reply to some question the clock had posed to him.  

After the presents, people stayed and ate cake and talked.  Poor Daddy had to go to work, so he left.  Some friends stayed and helped pick up and bit.  Wessy, who was more than a little sticky, got stripped down to his pampers and rinsed off and then was able to continue his dialogue with the clock.

After I determined that Wessy was not, in fact, going to take an afternoon nap, I took him to the pool and we had a fun little swim.  Then I gave Wessy dinner, took a shower with him (he likes to sit on the floor and chew on the shampoo bottles while I wash my hair) and we took Bubba out.  Wessy was  exhausted from such a full day and fell asleep during the walk snuggled up against me in the Ergo.  When I got him out of the Ergo, he woke up with a soft halo of sleep around his face.  He looked like a little cherub.  After a bottle of warm milk, he easily fell back asleep.  

And that was Wessy's excellent perfect awesome first birthday!

Birthday boy

Favorite food

One little monkey

Plum tuckered out

No place like mommy

Barefooted bobble heads

Perfect day

Just a quick post to remind myself later that today was (an almost) perfect day.   It started (a bit) imperfectly when Wessy woke up at 6am.  I very unwisely had stayed up until 1am the night before doing various things so that smarted.  Nevertheless, after an unsuccessful attempt to get him to nap with me (think gunnysack full of angry weasels) he drank a whole bottle of formula and then went down in his crib without a fight.

We woke up a little less bleary-eyed around eight.  We ate breakfast and walked the Buddy, then went to get Daddy up and then went to church.  We were only 25 minutes late, not too shabby.  We dropped Wessy off at the nursery where he was immediately surrounded by adoring church ladies.  Church was lovely, as were the coffee and donuts afterwards.

Wessy was bushed from his earlier exploits and turned into a cuddly, sighing little puddle in my lap when we got home.  I spent several minutes just sitting there with his little body in complete repose against my chest.  Since he is not one to sit still enough to allow for cuddling in real life, I spent the time sniffing his little warm-sunshine-and-sour-milk smell and patting his little bobble head.  I finally relinquished him to the crib and went to get a few things done.

I worked on painting some furniture while Stevo went on his usual rampage trying to do all the things around the house.  I actually made some progress.  Once Wessy stirred from his nap, we loaded up the ol' cargo bike and biked to Stevo's work colleagues house for a cook out.  They live waaaaay up on a hill so it was quite a haul for me (I had no electric assist) but the view was great and it was a part of town where I had not been before.  We are finding that it is A LOT of fun to bike around as a family, and having the electric assist on the cargo bike makes some routes more palatable than they otherwise would be.  Wessy, for his part, adores riding in his little baby seat in the back and will whine and shout when we stop at a stop sign until we start moving again.  He also loves to hold one or both of his arms out in a "victory pose" while on the bike, which I suppose is a combination of catching the wind and greeting passersby.

This was a Sonoma County cook out, so it included wine (of course), brie, figs and blueberries and tofu skewers.  Just lovely.  We had a great time just talking with folks and letting Wessy free-range around their patio and their giant sectional couch.  He even tried, with great enthusiasm, to feed a chewed up watermelon rind to their dog.

As we were leaving, Wessy made the discovery of a lights-flashing noise-making fire truck among our friends' kids' toys.  He was immediately rapt.  Apparently his ove of large trucks (i.e. the garbage truck) is multifaceted.  Stevo's friend kindly gave it to us since his kids don't play with it anymore, and I don't know if there was anyone happier than Wessy in Sonoma County this afternoon.

We biked home, making a quick pit stop at Home Depot for more painting supplies.  Once home, Wessy could barely hold his eyes open--no wonder, it was a big day for a little guy.   He was fussy but turned soft and cuddly after a meal and a bottle and is now sacked out.

We didn't really do anything spectacular per se, but it was an awesome family day.

Wessy and mommy

Wessy's new turf

catching up...

Well, I fell down on the blogging thing again and there is WAAAAAY too much to catch up on.  Little dubs is coming up on ONE year old and he is growing and changing every day.  

He is a mostly delightful, sometimes maddening and always cute little buddy. 

He is quickly (all too quickly) traversing the bridge between baby and toddler-hood. 

He favors finger foods so that he can feed himself thankyouverymuch and has been known to violently wrest the spoon from his feeders' hands, spraying food everywhere. He likes avocado, beans, cheese and banana but he LOVES blueberries. He will do anything to eat a blueberry. Recently at Whole Foods he came perilously close to face-planting when he leaned dangerously far out of the cart to try to grab a carton of blueberries with his chubby hands.  He drinks an improbably large amount of formula (still), which we are slowly trying to supplant with less babyish things (though I admit my heart will break the day he is totally done with taking a bottle).  

He says Mama and Dada quasi-reliably and occasionally will bust out a Bubba, an agua or a tete.  He seems to understand English and Spanish equally.  If you ask him "where's Dada?" he will swivel his head expectantly toward Stevo.

He gleefully dangles his food off the side of his highchair so that his furry "brother" will eat it and then lick his hands clean. Consequently, Bubba is warming up to Wes quite a bit.  

He writhes and wiggles and squirms all day and all night.  When it is time to put him to bed, he rolls around in his sleep sack and often undoes it.  Often he will wiggle around in his crib until the very second that sleep overcomes him.  When I go to check on him he will be frozen in mid-motion, thrown across the top of his stuffed animals in all kinds of awkward positions like a fallen Civil War hero on the battlefield.  Often we find him standing up holding onto the side of the crib in the morning with a grin of victory on his face.  

He predictably grins his Jack-O-Lantern grin (five teeth and counting) if you bark like a dog or push him on the swings. The other day, we were pushing him on the swings and a bus came by the playground (he LOVES all motor vehicles, in particular the garbage truck) and it was like Christmas morning!  He also likes to be fake "ambushed" while he is out cruising around the living room furniture and laughs an awesome bubbly laugh when he gets "caught."

He smells like a puppy covered in graham crackers or a bottle of warm milk wrapped in hay.  Except for his feet--those smell like a normal grown person's stinky feet and have been that way since he was practically a newborn!  

He has a bit of a biting problem and I don't know that he is clear about the differences between kissing and biting because he seems to bite with a lot of love, if that is possible.  He is certainly not aware, however, of how sharp his little teeth can be.

We recently switched him from his rear-facing carseat into one that is, fittingly, like a captain's chair which faces forward.  He adores the wind in his face. Last night, as we came back from the city, he chewed on his toys and held forth with a running commentary about the scenery and how he was feeling.  

 

After many months of being content to be held by anyone and everyone, he is getting a little stranger-shy.  He will cry until mama takes him back (I don't mind).  

He loves being in the water and doesn't even mind being dunked, though he doesn't understand yet about the whole closing-your-mouth thing when you go under.  He will sit on the side of the pool face me as I am standing in the pool and hold onto my hands and let me swing him into the water.  He will do this again and again even as his little lips turn blue and his teeth start to chatter.  

Every day my heart explodes a little more and he does something new or interesting.   It seems like every day more of the person he is becoming emerges and he becomes a little more defined.  He is less like a squishy baby and more like a BOY.  It hurts a little to think that he won't always be little, but it's also so, so wonderful to watch him grow.  

New toy!

Daddy says...

Me: "It's a sad state of affairs when you're not sure whether you would rather go to work or have dental surgery."
Stevo: "That's a no-brainer! I would love to have dental surgery!"

(To be fair, Stevo would love to have dental surgery so he can lay around and watch a movie, not because he hates work.)

Doing chores

This California kid loves the wind in his hair!

Why, yes, I am indeed a Noe Valley baby