happy birthday, david!

What does it mean to have a first birthday? Sleeping a lot, very much like the day he was born. He is still on the anti-nausea meds and they make him drowsy. But at least he is not barfy.

At one-year old David will hold up one finger when asked how old he is.

When I sing, "she loves you. . ." he says, "yeah, yeah, yeah."

The stairs are his favorite place to play

He can stack one block atop another.

"dog, ball, duck, book, dada, momma, that, that, that"

He points at something and says, "that" and I tell him what it is. Then, he points at something else. If he runs out of things, then he will repeat the pointing at some of his favorite items, such as the carved duck at grandma Susie's.

He knows the sign for "more," but he also knows how to point and then bang on the table which is also pretty effective.

While Jaime was pregnant, her parents gave us a camcorder on the assumption that we would be sending them regular tapes of their grandchild. A sort of baby-tape-of-the-month club. "You get a camcorder for $0.01 and your only obligation is to send six tapes over the next 12 months."

That didn't happen.

So I have been given the task of dubbing all of our home-movies of David to VHS before vacation is over.

So, on David's first birthday, I am watching again the tape of the day he was born.

Excuse me while I tear up just a little.

I never really posted about when he was born. It was a couple of days of terror, let me tell you. All of us who are parents know this fear "I can't do this. This baby is going to die in my care."

One year later, I feel that fear again. David has had a virus that has left him listless and unhappy and uninterested. Repeated vomiting, fever, and anger that he is so hungry and we won't feed him enough. Seeing such an active and engaged child, simply lying on his grandmother's lap whimpering simply undid me, bring back many of the same feelings of helplessness I felt in the first couple of weeks of his life.

But, I know that this is not the worst thing that will happen to him and I am lucky that we went a whole year before such an episode.

So, Happy Birthday, David. I would give you cake if I thought you could keep it down.