You turned one year old over a month ago.
You won't remember any of this when you read it, so let me tell you about you. Then I'll tell you about us, about me and your dad, about all the people you know (or some of them, anyway).
You love music. Whenever any kind of music comes on--in the grocery store, on commercials, someone's cell phone--you dance. You rock back and forth from side to side, your little head bobbing to the beat you imagine is part of the song, even though I don't think you'll learn rhythm for months yet. Just two days ago we brought you to a wedding reception for some of our friends, Skoticus and Kirsten, and we took you up to the house attic, the stairs hidden behind a bookshelf in the hallway. In the attic a stereo blared, a disco ball twirled on the ceiling, and you hobbled around the room, bobbing and swaying to Michael Jackson, Abba, and Michael Buble, whatever came on.
You love books. Hopefully we will still do this when you are old enough to read, but right now we keep stacks and stacks of books all over the house. Most of them within reach are yours--picture books, board books, some that we've checked out from the library, some that we've bought or been given as gifts. You love Sandra Boynton's books. We read
The Going to Bed Book several times a day. We all have it memorized--me, Dad, even Heidi and Allison, because we all live together in this house, and you've come waddling up to each of us in turn,
The Going to Bed Book in hand. Sometimes you throw it. Just to be sure we're paying attention.
Really, you love any book. You love
How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? and
Are You My Mother? and
Hop on Pop! and even
Lambs, which is the stupidest book I've ever read. For a long time your favorite book was
From Head to Toe, which your aunt Sarah gave to you before you were born. You would clap your hands with the seal and thump your chest with the gorilla. You would even screech out a little mew when we turned to the cat page. We lost the book, though. It's probably here somewhere, but I've just ordered a new one on Amazon because we have free shipping.
Skipping back, you also love throwing. You throw anything. Forks, bowls, bits of food, crayons, toys, blocks, and your favorite, pens and pencils. Heidi keeps a pen jar (more of a pail, actually) on her nightstand. You pull it down and throw the pens everywhere in the room, and then everywhere in the dining room just outside Heidi's room. You love the smack, smack, smack of plastic or pencil on linoleum.
[Ready to throw.]
You walk. When you read this you won't remember what it was like to pull yourself around the room by your arms, or to crawl from thing to thing, pulling out low-reach drawers and shelves. You used to pull all the books from off the bottom shelves of all the bookshelves in the house.
Now we pack the books in so tight, even we can't pull them out. Just the other day I came into the bedroom looking for a book, a biography I wanted to reference, and you walked right up to the bookshelf and pointed to it. It was spooky and hilarious both.
You love to go outside. Often, in the morning when you wake up, you grab me by the finger and pull me down the hall, around the kitchen, through the living room, and straight to the front door. You point and babble and I know you want to go outside, even though it's awful and cold and sometimes raining very hard. We've walked up and down the sidewalk so many times, me holding your finger, or steering you away from the street and busy driveways. We've walked together halfway to the library, which is just four blocks away. I carried you the rest of the way. You're barely bigger than you were at six months, but my arms still get pretty tired holding you.
You love, love, love to be held, and you walk into the room and point up at me or anyone there and hoot until one of us picks you up. We all get tired of it, though. We're glad you can walk.
The doctor told me to start feeding you ice cream. You're not big enough, he says. In fact, 90% of babies out-weigh you, their chubby arms and leg rolls fill up their 12- and 18-month clothes, while you still wear 6-month clothes with ease. You are petite, but your belly puffs out over your diaper, a round little tub that you slap and smack whenever you can reach it. Everything else about you is skinny and slim. You have strange, grown-up proportions. People always say you look just like a little man, which is true. Your great-grandma Layton always says you look so incredibly sharp, and we all wonder what's going on behind your round eyes, your concentrated face.
People also say you're so serious, so calm. I think they just don't know you well enough.
You are almost always laughing, and you inject your laughter into everyone's conversations, because that's what you've learned from us. You cut in after someone speaks with a loud HA HA HA HA. You even do this in public, which we learned when you laughed in the middle of a film Q&A which we went to for one of aunt Sarah's film premiers.
You know where your nose is, and where my nose is. You know who Daddy is, though you won't ever say so. You won't say a single thing. For one day you said "baba" whenever we said "bottle," but because you know signs, you don't see the need to speak. You sign "milk" and "water" and "more" and always, always, always "food, food, food, food, food."
You aren't fully weaned yet, and you used to like all the foods we would give you. Now you eat a few bites and get bored, though you still like most foods.
You absolutely do not like potatoes. Roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, you don't like them. You like french fries and sweet potatoes, but not regular white potatoes, which is fine because we don't really eat them anyway. You also don't like red peppers, but we think it's because of the strange texture. You eat plenty of spicy foods, even though some people don't think you should. We think you should, and I guess that's all that matters.
We eat mostly fruits vegetables at our house, and the vegetables are mostly roasted. Tossed with whole grain noodles or spooned over brown rice.
[Purple berry juice face. At the farmer's market.]
[Spying on chickens at a local farm. And eating pizza there:]
We also love pizza here, with home made whole wheat dough and goat cheese and pesto and we even put figs and plums on a few when we had pizza last. You like pizza, though to be honest, you probably prefer candy and cupcakes, which Heidi is almost always ready to give you. We call her the Candy Aunt.
Heidi watches you all the time. You might think this is strange when someday you're older and Heidi is a grownup with kids of her own, but right now you are the best of friends. When you get up in the morning you walk into the kitchen and beg me for food, but then straightaway you walk over to Heidi's door and pat, pat, pat on it with your hand. She's not always there, but when she is, sometimes I just push open the door and let you play with all the toys in her room.
You also love Allison's room. Allison used to live a few houses down from Nana and Pop-pop back in Seattle. She grew up playing with Aunts Heidi, Hannah, and Naomi. She moved to Utah to take a break from her house. She goes to community college in Salt Lake City. We make fun of her for doing laundry all the time, just like we make fun of Dad for mowing the lawn all the time, or of Heidi for doing homework all the time, or of me for always, always, always being so dang hungry. Allison plays with you every day, and you always go to her when you want to go outside. She's very good at letting you just play and play, even if you make a mess.
Dad doesn't like the messes so much, though that doesn't mean they don't happen.
He likes a clean house, which will probably still be the case when you read this letter. He does the dishes all the time, and always wants to have Clean-Up Hour, which is good after a week of school and letting the dishes and laundry and clothes pile up. The house isn't always clean, but this morning it is. And this morning, he gave you a bath, though this isn't a picture of it.
[This is from your first birthday, right after you did this:]
[Though this is from your actual birthday:]
Dad is very much into politics, and spends lots of time reading and writing and watching news clips online. He's reading the Constitution right now, along with a handful of books about economics and health care and government policies. He's a devoted Ron Paul supporter, and has taken you to the farmer's market several times while canvassing with his friend, Chris.
[This is us at the farmer's market. You're on the phone, apparently.]
Dad works in Salt Lake City as a writer for Allen Communications. He makes a long commute every day, and the hour back and forth (sometimes more) is usually when he gets in a lot of his reading. He likes his job, and we think we might move up to Salt Lake when I'm finished with school if his job still works for us.
I'm still in school. I finished my MA and started my MFA right after you were born (about two weeks after, in fact).
I have classes every day except for Fridays. I get up early (between 6:00 and 6:30) to write, because I have a hard time writing when you're awake. You like to pound on the keyboard and steal the mouse and squawk until I stop typing.
We gave you your own mouse to play with, and sometimes you're content to click around and peer up at the computer screen while I work, but not usually. I write for class and I write my novel, which will be my thesis for my MFA. I just got all the signatures for my prospectus done this week. It's the first step in the journey toward my totally finished MFA, and I'm excited to move forward. The last degree was hard, and emotionally tiring, in part because I kept having to do parts of it over and over and over (I never did get it quite right, I think), and in part because I was heavy and pregnant with you, which sometimes makes you tired and frustrated and you start crying for no reason. I think you'll probably learn this someday, maybe when you have your own pregnant wife. Be sure to hug her lots.
I keep entering writing contests, mostly this is because they always give you free food at the awards ceremonies, and I love free food more than anything, especially when it involves several courses. I went to an awards luncheon this past week and brought Aunt Sarah with me. We dabbed our faces with cloth napkins and Aunt Sarah didn't know which forks to use for which parts of the meal. It was delicious and I hope someday you'll have reasons to go to fancy dinners and eat food with french names and artsy sauce squiggles on the side of the plate.
[This was your birthday dinner.]
But award money, right now, also goes toward paying our bills. We've been able to save up some and we're not in debt at all as I write this. Hopefully when you read this we'll have house payments to take care of, or maybe not even that. We like renting this place. I love how old it is, even though the walls are not so good at keeping out the cold. We have a crumbly brick fireplace and a guy buried in the driveway. He was a lieutenant who died in WWII, and his headstone sits right below the driver's side door when we pull into the driveway. Whenever something does wrong with the house, or whenever we hear strange settling noises, we always say it must be Father Lawrence.
We have a front yard and a back yard, which I love, and which I doubt we will have in the next place we live. We have trees in the back and a planter full of veggies I tried to take care of, but that mostly died from the snails that infest the whole yard.
[Our only fruits from our vegetable garden.]
[When I said we ate mostly vegetables, I did mean *mostly*]
When it was warmer (which it was until just Thursday) we used to go outside in our bare feet and pad around the yard. You and Heidi chased and caught grasshoppers, and Heidi swears one pooped (and peed) in her hand.
You don't like to sleep. You used to suck on a binky as you fell asleep, but now if we try and give you one, you pull it out of your mouth and throw it and cry. Sometimes you can get so angry and thrashing. Most nights I nurse you and cuddle up with you until you fall asleep in our bed. Sometimes you stay there until morning, sometimes Dad picks you up and places you gently into your crib at the foot of our bed. You kick Dad a lot in your sleep, so much that he usually has to move to the floor if you don't sleep in your crib. We only got the crib a month ago. Before that you either slept with us, or on a little crib mattress on the floor that we bought on sale at IKEA.
[Gymnastic sleeper.]
We love having you close. I missed you when you stopped sleeping next to us, even though we all got plenty more sleep. You sleep through the night now, mostly, though you go to bed late, late, late. Ten at the earliest, midnight at the latest. You sleep in like a teenager, sometimes til nine thirty or ten. You take about one nap a day, and when you don't, you're an angry wreck. You won't fall asleep on your own. I usually nurse you or bounce you in my arms until you sleep. Sometimes I sing, but that also keeps you awake, too. You love music, like I said. You also fall asleep in the car, almost every time.
I know there is so much more I could tell you, but I worry that this letter is too long already. I wonder if you'll ever actually read it. I hope so. I hope when you read this that you'll know that I love you, and Dad does, and so do all of your aunts and grandparents and great-grandparents. We love to hold you and laugh at your silly things. Sometimes when you sleep I stand by your crib and put my hand on your back or your belly and I feel nervous and calm and happy and curious about how you'll be and what you'll be like. I promise I'll keep writing to you and I hope someday you read this and wonder at how you could ever, possibly have been so small and different. But you probably won't be as different as you think, and I'm so excited to see who you are. I love you. We all do.
Love,
Mom
PS - I hope you love every single birthday, your whole lifetime through.
