Poor little D. Her birthday celebration on Monday wasn’t exactly the fun-filled evening I was expecting. Sure it could’ve been a lot worse, but it certainly could’ve been better, too.
I left work a little early to pick her up from daycare, since one of R’s brothers and his family were coming into town for the Brewers game that night and staying at our house, so I wanted to be there when they arrived. Plus, duh, who doesn’t like to leave work early? Turns out D had taken zero naps all day, which never bodes well for the evening hours. I don’t think she’s ever decided to not nap at all at daycare, so right then I prepared for the worst. Of course she ended up falling asleep on the couch after about 2 sips of her bottle just minutes after we got home around 4, then slept for 2 solid hours until about 6. That actually wasn’t too bad because R and I were able to get a lot done around the house – he started preparing food and sauces for our upcoming party this weekend and I hung some curtains in the dining room. I’m getting pretty good at this curtain hanging thing, if I do say so myself. Just don’t make me use anything but a power drill and screwdriver now, and I’m golden.
After her nap I gave D a birthday dinner of pears, cheese, bananas, and Cheerios while we finished up what we were doing, eagerly awaiting the token first birthday cake-smashing-in-the-face. She was still pretty zombie-fied from the day, so she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about much food, hence the lighter fare. Usually she happily gobbles up a hot dog and a couple other things, but a hot dog a day doesn’t really work like an apple to keep the doctor away. And she’s been eating tons of hot dogs lately. Anyway.
Before we got to the cupcake, however, we measured her on the growth chart board that R made for her. This thing is awesome. He took a router to the edges of a 2×4 to give it a finished look, found some really cute letters to spell out her name and glued them to the top, then stained and sealed the whole thing. So each year we’ll measure how tall she is on it, starting with her length at birth of 19″, and he’ll wood burn it in as a keepsake. We’ll mount it on the wall outside her bedroom door. She’s up to 29.5″, 10.5″ of growth in her first year. Yeah, go D! Then we showed her the box her water table came in with a big bow on top of it out in the garage, since it was a little late in the day to get started setting it up and playing. She seemed to approve.
All right – cupcake time! Let the smashing begin. We were definitely more excited about this part of the day than she was. So we got her back in the highchair, bib on, cupcake paper off, #1 candle on top, lit and sitting on her tray, ready to be blown out with some help from Mommy. Oh wait, Mom, what is this shiny thing? Fire? Let me stick my finger in it to see what it does. Oops!! She stuck her finger right in the middle of that flame to the wick before I could grab her hand away. Total Mommy fail. Of course R’s like why in the hell did you do that? I could see it from happening over here! (over here being where he was positioning the video camera to record this precious first birthday moment) Yeah, cuz I did that on purpose. I enjoy watching our child scream in agony. Oh man, that was bad. Her poor little head turned as red as a tomato with her screams, as I’m trying to suck on her finger to cool it off. Does that even work? Or does it just make it worse? I don’t know, but that was my first instinct so in my mouth her tiny index finger went. R got an ice cube to put on it right away, but she still got a little blister on it. Damn. Fortunately it didn’t seem to bother her much at all after the first couple minutes, once the pain subsided. Geez, Mommy, way to go again.
Ok, take 2. Once we got her calmed down I was tempting her with some frosting off the cupcake on my finger, since she was a little leery of going in the highchair again. That seemed to work, so she allowed me to put her back in to try the cupcake thing once more, sans candle this time. Except she really wanted nothing at all to do with that nice funfetti cupcake that I had so lovingly made and frosted in pink for her. She stuck her finger in the frosting a little tiny bit and squished it in her hand, but that was about it. Not one bite. No throwing it anywhere. No smashing in the face. I thought all babies smashed cake in their face on their birthday, didn’t you? Ah well, guess I can’t blame her. I don’t think I’d be too thrilled about something that had just burned me either, even with the burny thing removed. Maybe we’ll try again this weekend at our party so others can join in the fun, too. She did get a huge kick out of us singing “Happy Birthday” to her, though, so we ended up singing it 3 times. That means my horrifying singing voice is now captured on home video thrice. Ick. But anything to make her smile on her birthday. Plus by this point she was sufficiently exhausted again, so it was time for a bath and then bed for that little birthday girl. She had some wicked diaper rash happening that night too, which didn’t help her mood, and then I saw the culprit – another tooth. Ah ha! See, I knew these things were festering in there these past couple weeks. It’s not a molar though, like I was expecting, it’s the bottom right one that’s right next to the ones already there. What’s that called, a cuspid? I have no idea. But I saw it in there just under the surface as she was screaming with her finger on fire, then I saw the very tippy tip the following morning.
As I was rocking her to sleep with her bottle that night I obviously found myself staring down at her little head and reminiscing on that same night 1 year earlier, her first night out in this big wide world. Man, what a difference a year makes. That very first night was filled with the remaining shock and elation from the day – we had a daughter. Wait, we had a daughter!! I remember the nurses taking her to the nursery that first night and R going home to sleep, leaving just me in the hospital room, exhausted yet almost too excited to sleep, trying to fathom what life with a little girl was going to be like and wondering how long it would be until they brought her back for her first feeding. I missed her already. Then there was that night 2 nights ago, filled with calm and peace, looking down at our 1 year old daughter knowing that we made it through a whole year with a little girl and things just seemed to fall into place as we went. Thinking how lucky we are to have her in our lives, how beautiful and incredible she is, how endless the possibilities are for her in her own life, wondering what these coming years have in store. But most of all just thanking everything in the universe for her, our daughter D, on her first birthday.
p.s. i went for a run on sunday morning, my first one in a week. it felt horrible. my legs hurt the whole time, and i felt like i was moving at a snail’s pace. so i was very surprised when i entered my stats – i ran 2.86 miles in 25:32 minutes, for a 8:56 pace. not nearly as bad as i was expecting. i just need to get more than 1 run in a week. unfortunately, this week is going to be busy, so i might only be able to squeeze in one more, tops.