First Birthday!

Is it really possible that an entire year has passed since our bundle of joy arrived?  With such cool weather compared to last year, I might have believed we hadn’t made it to June yet, but the inexorable growth of our almost-toddler is clear.  We’ve been through so much in the first 12 months of Toby’s life, we were happy to pause and celebrate together.

In the time leading up to the big day, we were very busy.  I was teaching my first class as lead instructor, a field-based Ecology Lab.  A wonderful experience, but time-consuming, it finished up the day after his birthday.  I was also pushing hard to get a new analysis done for a conference in late June – more on that in the next post.  Matt (the hero) picked up a lot of my slack around the house.  Including playing “open & close,” one of Toby’s favorite games.

In spite of the business, we did take time for pleasure – including Toby’s craziest playdate yet, which involved a sandbox and a water table.  Toby loved them both.  This action shot shows him getting the splashes he'd been recently handing out. 

In the middle of teaching the class, Toby and I took an exciting solo trip to Oberlin for my 10-year reunion.  I wasn’t sure about doing this by myself, but Matt had to work and I knew we could just drive the four hours home if it didn’t work out well.  So, we packed up the car and off I went.  I snuck in a visit with Christina, Eva, and Martin in Cleveland on the way there.  Toby decided to charm his ever-cuter lady-friend by showing off his sock-removing skills.  I think she was wowed. 

At Oberlin, it was wonderful to introduce the little guy to so many people and places that are special to me from my formative college years.  He enjoyed learning how to play banjo with Chad, singing with Mel, falling asleep in a stroller (for the first time) during the venerable Illumination tradition with Cat, playing with other fresh Oberlin babies, and eating falafel with Caroline.  He got his pants FILTHY with his first extensive foray into lawn-crawling.  Several of my old friends proved indispensable once again, helping me juggle a baby in a tiny dorm room on my own.  It turns out the only way to manage without Matt is to replace him with three other people.  

Falafel isn’t the only new thing Toby has been eating; with the help of his fancy new molar, he eats almost everything we do now.  At least, on adventurous days.  Those are the kinds of days when he steals my toast out of my hand or enthusiastically pops lima beans in his mouth.  There are still times when we go back to the old faithful squishies: yogurt, applesauce, and oatmeal.  Yogurt is the most reliable; plain, organic, whole-milk yogurt always seems to hit the spot.  Other than that, changeability is the rule.  There are hungry days when he’s a bottomless pit for spinach and lentil stew, and picky days when a rice cracker and a cup of yogurt is all that goes down.  Today he may turn his nose up at the peas he prized yesterday.  On the other hand, he may decide he wants to eat raw onions like apples.  Really.  I took it away once I realized he was serious.

In spite of the challenges of consistently pleasing the tot, I have found the “food is love” mantra of my childhood feeling more and more true.  I’ve started a Sunday pancake tradition, even though he can only eat one.  Every time we share a treasured recipe with him for the first time, I’m tempted to take a picture.  (We have a lot of treasured recipes).  Even though I'm sure he would be fine without it, we go out of our way to prepare homemade applesauce and send our own food along with him to daycare – because especially when he’s away from us, we want him to be surrounded by our love.  As he gets older and can enjoy more complex foods and remember the stories, we look forward to sharing more of these culinary embraces from both sides of his family.  He’s already making moves toward participating by developing his passion for cookware.  (Note my stealth-video skills, developed to outwit a camcorder-wary baby).

In the lead up to his birthday, he’d been talking a bit more, but still not very many clear sounds.  “Mama” and “Dada” definitely featured often in the babbling, and were starting to seem associated with us, but not enough to call the first word.  He did go through a brief phase of saying “Dadoooo!” which we found nearly too charming to bear.  I decided then that I was switching Matt from Daddy to Daddoo, but then Toby stopped saying it.  Bummer.  His friend Lillian at daycare calls him “Bobo” now… Bobo and Daddoo seems like the title of a hit children’s book to me.  I’m taking plot suggestions.

He did make some ambulatory progress right before his birthday, including getting off the bed all by himself for the first time on June 5^th.  We’d been working on this for weeks, ever since he threw himself off headfirst (scaring me witless yet somehow escaping without even a bruise).  Now he’s a real pro at this handy skill, also using it for couches and stairs.  Sometimes he still gets stalled halfway off the bed, with his feet dangling, and has to be encouraged to push, but he always manages.  The video is shaky because I’m also trying to be sure he doesn’t go boom – he’s so steady now I let him do it all by himself. 

He’s been cruising around pushing his fire truck quite handily as well, even making three circuits around the loop in our house with MommaSue just before he turned 1.

Celebrating Toby’s birthday was a two-step affair this year.  His actual birthday was on a Thursday, and we kept it small with just the three of us and MommaSue.  As is traditional in my family, I started the day by telling Toby about his birth.  This could have been boring to a one-year-old, but I used lots of inflection.  Matt and I headed off to work, leaving Toby and MommaSue to enjoy each other’s company.  I’d fantasized about making the little man an angel food cake for his first birthday, but there was no way I could make it happen.  Sue saw that coming, and brought everything she needed to make the cake with her from Ligonier!  That’s how she spent Toby’s birthday naptime.  This felt like a fantastic present for ME.  Joelyn and Mridul stopped by in the evening to give Toby a present – he loves the Dr. Seuss books that came in the package, but opening the box was still probably the best part.

We had a meal of macaroni with tomato sauce and peas, since those are all things Toby enjoys.  I decorated the cake and lit the candle.  Matt and Toby blew it out.  By dessert, he was so full and tired, he mostly enjoyed his piece by squishing rather than eating it.  Nobody minded.  We were all peacefully in bed before the time Toby had actually arrived the year before.

The little man has been enjoying his presents very much, even the ones he’s technically not quite developmentally ready for.

The following Sunday was Matt’s second father’s day, and we invited over all the local friends who helped us grow and thrive through our first year as parents to celebrate with strawberry shortcake in the yard.  It was our first garden party, and included a spread that I hope would make my Aunt Jean proud (it included lemonade and used her card tables and many of her dishes, so it can’t have been that far from perfection.)  Toby enjoyed himself and it felt like just the right way to mark the beginning of a year of walking and talking.

More on our more recent adventures, as well as Toby’s considerable post-birthday progress, in the next post (very soon!).  I’ll close with this sweet fawn Matt spotted while he was out at work in late May – one of those amazing moments he gets in his wonderful job.