First Birthday!

Elliot’s first birthday was the bestest day ever! We had great food (thanks Jody!), friends and family, and great weather. Elliot was cooperative and took a nice long nap right before it was time to leave, and while he did that we were busily purchasing helium balloons and texting friends to come to the party. We haven’t had internet since we moved into the new place so while the original invite was hastily put up on facebook we had no way of following up and checking who was actually coming. We just texted a whole bunch of people to come to McCarren park in an hour! Oh, we are the worst!

Anyway, we made it, friends made it, and while unfortunately baby Joseph ended up getting sick the day before, baby Hunter came with mom and dad and the boys had a great time jamming.

Elliot had fun mingling, poking his cake and then shoving it into his mouth and then opening presents. He also continued the tradition of passing on the beloved shopping cart to the next soon-to-be walker.

We were relived that the cake actually came out quite good. We made it the night before - gluten-free chocolate with vanilla frosting - and in addition to it initially appearing a little dried out and misshapen we seemed to make it even worse when we attempted to apply the frosting and poopy chocolate happy birthday writing. We had us some good convulsive laughter as we used a ziplock bag with a hole in it for the frosting writing and realized that we should probably start getting better at these things. All in all it was the best birthday ever!

Walkin' on sunshine

Major announcement, Elliot is on the move! As you know he’s been almost walking for quite a while now but just a few days ago he finally took off. Now he’s walking, running, wobbling, teetering, and falling all over the place. This major breakthrough was just a couple of days after we moved to our new apartment which is more spacious (where he has his own room!) and I wonder if the impetus came from the new sense of space and freedom.

With the big one year birthday coming up I can’t help but reflect on where I was one year ago, at this point I would have been several days overdo, supremely anxious, and desperately trying to avoid inquisitive questions and anticipatory remarks. Every time I see a pregnant woman on the street I think ‘oh, honey, you’ll make it’ and send her telepathic words of encouragement and support. I’d say it’s been a pretty incredible year. I had a baby, I changed careers and started school, and I moved to a new place.  I couldn’t be more grateful to the world for its’ bountiful generosity and I appreciate every crazy sleepless stressful exhausting minute of it!

Elliot is growing so fast, it’s true what they say about time’s fleeting nature, it is relentless and unforgiving in it’s tenacity to move forward and leave us all behind. We watched some videos of him at a few weeks old, a few months, and even felt nostalgic for the ones taken just a few weeks ago because I can already see that he has grown and changed since then. It is a sad and beautiful and remarkable thing to watch a child grow.