One

I'm not sure how so many long days can add up to such a short year, but tomorrow my baby turns one year old.

One year ago today she was a mystery—a genderless, active, rather pointy baby who liked—during ultrasounds, anyway—to suck on his/her upper lip. We've learned so much this year: She is a redhead, a tall one, a ham, an adorable bottom-up sleeper, a persistent climber, a dog lover. She loves to swing, loves to unpack and disassemble, loves to shove blocks and rocks down the back of her own shirt. She loves her big sister. She eats dirt.

She says a lot of words, but most of them sound like "Aap-hm." She signs fan, light, all done, bell, and occasionally more. She does not want to be contained. She can draw with a crayon. She can climb all our stairs, up and down. She can point, when asked, to her head, ears, nose, tummy, and toes.

She likes nursing, but she likes bananas even better. She looks great in brown. She still loves to pee with her diaper off. She'll put up, good naturedly, with a lot: erratic scheduling, squashing by her big sister. But wrong her (take away her sleepy doll, or show her Mama or bananas without handing over the goods) and her face and voice tell you in no uncertain terms how very unjust she finds the situation.

She is ticklish. Rolling around on the bed makes her laugh. Dancing makes her grin. What she really wants most is to eat the cat's tail. When she stretches (she has done this since she was a newborn) she holds her elbows right next to her ears. She likes to experiment with her orifices: Can she breathe in and out with a finger in one nostril? How about the other? How about with her fingers in her ears? She explores these things with a look of fascination on her face.

She hardly ever holds still anymore, except when I nurse her in the middle of the night, and sometimes I—I, lover of sleep—stay in her room, holding her, long after she's done nursing, looking at her round little cheeks in the mostly dark, feeling the weight of her head in the crook of my arm, her legs soft and still in my lap.

On Tuesday Iris stood on her own for the first time, grinning, chuckling, and clapping her hands. Yesterday she took her first three little falling steps, crash landed in my lap and then backed up to stand again on her own—a sturdy little tripod of two legs and an arm, then an upright, grown up girl looking right into my face with her big brown eyes.

Tomorrow we'll celebrate with banana cake (not this but this—poor, nutritionally deficient second child) and a toast to our family of four and to the little girl who keeps on surprising us all.

Happy birthday, little bear. I can't wait to see what the next year holds.

Linda (with bonus glimpse of mildewed shower curtain)

This is exactly what people mean when they say blogging will cause your kids trauma and embarrassment. But I can't resist. I have worked very hard to word this in a way that won't attract scurrilous googlers:

This is my eldest's number one favorite implement for bathtub self-exploration.

Obviously, the girl is a genius.

I cover this up when my mother in law comes over.

(And that's not a lifetime record, it's just since I decided a couple of weeks ago that some sort of external shaming would get me back on track.)

Dimples

I ought to make some sort of consistent policy on whether to post photos of my kids here. But for now, since I'm not well rested enough to either do that or write more than a couple of sentences, enjoy the cuteness.

Hung Over

Yesterday Ingrid turned three, and we had a little party with all of her favorite people: Grandma, aunts and almost-aunts, former nanny, first friends.

If I’d been the toast-making type and not so busy scraping rice out of Iris’s hair, I would have said something elegant to thank Ingrid’s inner circle for all they’ve done to make her the magnificent and mostly happy girl she is. There’s probably no adequate way to convey the great, sloppy, absurd depth of my gratitude to these folks; I believe it is their love for Ingrid and for our family that’s gotten us through the past year and more. If there are words good enough for that, I was too distracted to think of them and too shy to say them.

Instead we made sparkly birthday crowns, blew bubbles in the yard, ate and ate, and sang a loud round of “Happy Birthday” to the happiest-looking girl in the world, who expertly blew out her three candles, then removed them from the cake, carefully licking the whipped cream from each one.

The hung over feeling is not related to anything consumed at the birthday party, alas, but from lack of sleep. Last week I lost the travel drive I use to carry all my files back and forth to the office. I had most files backed up, but late yesterday evening realized I’d lost several more hours of work than I’d thought, and those several hours needed to get done between, oh, ten and one last night. (This is not the first time I have lost a dramatic amount of data. I feel the need to mention this when it happens. PSA! Digital Loss: It could happen to you! Back up everything, not like me!)

I have some things to say about regret and friends and spring and desperation and what I was thinking about the Chris Offutt short story “Second Hand” while I was running the other day (Hi Eva!), but now I’ve got to finish the work I was too bleary to get to at one a.m. and then look for a clean shirt for my staff meeting this afternoon.

Oh, and yesterday was also Mothers' Day. A belated happy one to you and yours. In celebration, A bought me a purple rhododendron bush (ok, so we are into botanical commemorations around here), gave me a card with a picture of the ocean on it, and didn't blink when I spent way too much on plants on Friday.

Peach

Three Mays ago, my mom and mother in law bought a lilac tree to plant in our yard in honor of Ingrid's birth. They wanted to do something similar for Iris, but we were all too superstitious to plant anything last spring (before the baby got to us safely), and too busy after she was born to baby a new plant through a drought in time for winter.

So they gave us a gift certificate for a local nursery, and we had the winter to figure out what to plant for this girl.

A couple of months ago, we found out there is a variety of peach tree that's hardy in our area. We are suckers for all things edible, and what could be a better way to honor our round, mild-tempered, red-headed girl? So last weekend, on Iris's nine-month birthday, we planted this:



For the first couple of seasons, we'll pull off any fruit that sets right away, so the heavy peaches don't snap the young branches, and so the tree can work on growing strong to get through the winter. It will be right around Iris's third birthday before we get our hands on the sweet, fuzzy, rosy fruit. For now, we'll have to settle for this:

In Which I Ruin Valentine's Day And Then Redeem Myself

A and I aren't enthusiastic observers of Valentine’s Day. We appreciate the ritual to remind us of sweetness, especially during the current date night drought, but we are healthily skeptical of a holiday that does so much for the bottom line of Hallmark. So it’s our habit to celebrate, but a week or so after the 14th. This way, we get a romantic holiday without feeling (so much) like sheep. Plus, we take advantage of discounts on chocolate and flowers, and, more importantly, are better able to get a table at the restaurant of our choice, not to mention a babysitter.

So Thursday was not to be a big family holiday around our house, but I’d planned a play date with a friend, and when I realized it fell on Valentine’s day I decided I’d let my inner Martha out on parole and bake heart-shaped cookies, make frosting, and let the girls get themselves sticky with the decorating.

Ingrid and I cut out and baked the cookies yesterday morning while Iris screeched at us from the sling. Ingrid did a lot of the cookie cutting. She also ate an unmeasured but certainly very large amount of cookie dough, which may account for the trouble that began at nap time.

Just before nap time, my friend called; her daughter was sick, and they couldn’t come for the play date. When I put Ingrid down for her nap, she lay there quietly for a while, and I came downstairs, but after a few minutes I started to hear pitiful crying on the monitor.

I went up and asked her what was wrong. Remember that time I threw up in my bed? I don’t want to throw up. Huh. Was she coming down with the stomach flu? A little queasy from eating three pounds of sugar cookie dough? Worried about getting sick because she heard that her friend was? Or did she just not want to take a damn nap? Or some combination of those?

I didn’t want to be harsh on her if she actually was feeling awful and/or about to throw up. I didn’t want to get (as I often am) sucked into a lot of weird nap delay tactics. Mostly, I wanted her to take a nap, and I wanted to somehow figure out whether she was actually sick (she didn’t look it) or not.

I thought for a minute and then said, with sincere, calm sympathy, Oooh, I really hope you’re not sick. If you’re so sick you can’t go to sleep or have some quiet time in your crib, then we won’t be able to do fun things in the afternoon like decorate cookies.

I know. I know.

One long conversation, some tears, an amount of patience (on my part) I hadn't thought possible, and NO NAP later, we were both downstairs. Ingrid happily (and pukelessly) playing with puzzles and occasionally checking the current status with an unemotional Can we decorate cookies now? , and me kicking myself for holding that out as a consequence and probably sadder about missing the fun cookie thing than Ingrid was, but sticking to my guns.

I am not sure what good it did. By dinner she was so tired she was nodding at the table and saying I can’t see any of my pizza. (She couldn’t see it because her eyes were closed.) Perhaps next time I make an idle nap time threat I will choose the consequence more carefully.

But, as promised, this evening after work we all got up to our elbows in frosting. There were grins all around, Ingrid ate an unmeasured, large number of cookies, and she went to bed without a peep. Looks like the whole family grooves on the habit of celebrating Valentine’s day after the 14th.

These are just the ones that made it onto the plate.

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