1

I have 46 minutes to sum up 1. It's August 10th, but soon it will be August 11th and the magic of today will be gone.

42 minutes to sum up the joy of being with you every day. How all over the neglected hairy floors of our house are your little clothes, because you keep getting into water and dirt and leaves, and because when you try to drink out of straws, you forget to swallow sometimes, but you never forget to open your mouth and let the tea or Mountain Dew fall all over you.

The way you're learning so, so very quickly. Just today you learned how to blow kisses. Well, kind of: you put your palm on your cheek, or over your eye, then fling your hand from your face and go MMMMMMMMMMMUH! (To be fair, you put your hand over your mouth at least half of the time.) And how have you already figured out that shaking your head means "no"? How do you even know the CONCEPT of "no?"

You point at things. Just since last week; that's you seeing something cool and sharing it with us. Trucks, ceiling fans, televisions, dogs, everything amazing to you, and you're like, hey mom and dad, isn't that so cool over there? And we get genuinely excited, like YEAH RALEIGH WOW LOOK AT THAT LAMP, THAT IS AMAYYYYYZINNNNG!, but what's really amazing is you.

What's amazing is the curve of the back of your head, still so babyish. The way your hair curls - we call you "Little Mad Scientist Head." It's amazing how fast and confident you crawl around your world, scared only of stuffed animals with eyes.

1 evolved quickly from 1 day, speeding up exponentially as time went on. Were you always learning and growing so quickly, just quietly? One day you had a vocabulary of four words, and two days later you had eight or nine. Was your brain always doing that?

I couldn't stop thinking about you today. Woke up next to you like every day, our first interaction, smiles. Just this past weekend, we cleared out the storage room that was to be yours - back when we thought you were going to be sleeping in there - because you got so many birthday presents that we couldn't keep all your toys in the living room anymore. That's where we went first thing this morning, to play, because you're the birthday boy and even though you don't have a clue what that is, I wanted this day to be special for you.

Your dada drove home for lunch to see you, and the second he walked in the door he dropped his groceries on the floor of the foyer because you were reaching out for him to pick you up from my arms. We took him back to work after lunch, and I had to get some groceries too, and as I wheeled you through Food Lion asleep in your carseat I wanted to tell everyone I saw that you were 1 today. You make us so proud.

We got home and you played TrayWater while I made cupcakes, then we picked up dada again and the last hours of your day went about as usual, except messier. There was your baaAAAAaaaaaf, and dada and me trying to imitate the way you point, the way we always imitate you doing things - we always laugh so hard that way.

So now it's 33 minutes past the magical day where the minute of your birth went by. I constantly thought in awe of how you were just a baby this day last year, and now I don't even want to go into the baby sections in stores anymore because none of the toys there would keep your interest and most of the clothes there look like your size but are actually way too small.

Well, now it's actually 50 minutes past your birthday, you've woken up and I need to get you back to bed so I'm not going to spend time to think of a nice way to finish this. Happy birthday I love you!

1.

A Year Ago I Was In The Shower

That is so crazy to me. This time last year, we didn't have a baby yet. On this night last year, I was in the shower, in labor, only about 9 hours away from making the decision to go to the hospital. I was tired and bored because I'd been having contractions for like two days already and had had very little sleep, and the only way to not be in too much pain was by standing in the shower, and it gets boring in there.

But also, I was scared. Joe's and my life together had been wonderful, and once we finally achieved pregnancy, I didn't know why I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO HAVE A BABY. I didn't even know what a baby WAS; I hadn't been around any. Why would we change our good life by bringing into it such a responsibility, by making such a choice that could never be taken back? How was it possible that my "biological clock" could push us into doing something with the vague logic that, if we didn't, maybe our lives would be empty when we were old?

Then Raleigh was born, and there was no magical surge of mystical mommy-love. He was nice, sweet, but I guess in sort of a kitteny way. The only face I could think of to make in those first photos with him - how I regret now that I forced any expression - was a "Wow, I made this" face.

The day of his birth and the two or three right after that were some of the most perfect in my life. If I could re-live any time of my life, I would go back there and write everything down, capture it to be savored any time forever. The celebration; having all this food brought to me; people happy around me because I did something great. A triumphant moment still in the beginning of my life. It brought uncomfortable thoughts about the end of my life - growing up, more responsibility, getting older - but that was easy to ignore in the beautiful homecoming, with Joe having made the house spotless before Raleigh and I were released from the hospital.

But then I awoke to the day when those sparkling first days were over. Like that feeling you get when you've been on vacation but now it's over and you're back to your regular life but worse than regular, because you were just free and it's going to be a very long time before you get to be free again.

I had feared that my life would be erased. This is what the world says about having a kid: You will cease to exist and also cease to ever get any sleep. Raleigh needed when I didn't feel like giving, and I felt so alone with his neediness. Because of him, I couldn't do the fun stuff I had done before; my other life was lost to me. My marriage hadn't caught up to these new conditions yet. I had no idea things would get better. In the darkest moments of those newborn days, in my thoughts I had secret conversations with myself to figure out whether I really would choose to die to protect him like I was supposed to. I came to "yes" just by default, because that's what you do if you're decent...but honestly, it was reluctant. Even adoption crossed my mind. (But no way, the thought of someone else raising my baby made me feel territorial.)

Dark days. My baby was easy but early motherhood was hard and I thought my life was over.

I was wrong. I mean, it was really scary for a little while there, but as Raleigh became cooler and more able to do stuff instead of just generally needy and unrewarding, I fell in love.

He grew. We grew. As of just a few weeks ago, our marriage has caught up to these new conditions and finally finally we are back to where we belong with each other, which really changes everything. We are together now, and the three of us are a family now, with so much to look forward to and the grown-up days of our baby so, so far away from now.

As of last week, our perfect boy says "da-da" and "thank you" and "yellow," and they're all the same word. He says "bath" "baaAAAAaaaaaf," with that short "f," and there is almost nothing in my entire life that has delighted me more; every day I look forward to the moment lifting him from his high chair after dinner when I get to ask him if he's ready for his bath and he looks at me and says that. Every day I'm thrilled when I hand him something and he says "deh dehhhh" - thank you. And the way he makes these awful noises that are an imitation of any racecar sounds we make at him.

I'm sorry about that rough start taking up approximately 3/4ths of the year and 4/4ths of the pregnancy. Sorry that I couldn't just relax, stop being afraid, and have more happy times. Next time, when I know what to expect, (if there is a next time but we won't talk about that).....next time will be different. But Raleigh, I guess, will probably know that his beginning didn't go how it should have.

But hopefully he'll also know that we love him more than anything, say to each other every single day what a treasure he is, how we can't remember how we could've thought that our old life without him could possibly be enough.

Happy birthday, sweet boy. We love being with you and are so excited to see what this year brings.

Things Babies Hate

This is not me and Raleigh when Joe gets home from work. (Partly because we aren't creepy spider aliens.)

It was supposed to be. Because how do stay-at-home moms have sweatpants and messy houses at all? They stay at home, where there's nothing to do but clean, exercise, or watch TV. There is 0 excuse for any stay-at-home mom to ever do anything but have sparkling carpets, chiseled abs, dinner ready, and to be all dressed up when their man comes home. Especially if they have only one vehicle and the man takes it during the day. But yet I kept reading about these women who can't find time for a shower and who eat the leftovers of their kids' lunches for breakfast around 4 PM, who live with dirt on the floor and dishes in the sink. "Wow," my pregnant self thought, "What is wrong with them?"

Everything was going to be so nice and perfect. Clean house, healthy meals, painless budget, so much time to write. The first day of Joe being back at work after his paternity leave would be the first day of my long and rewarding career as a flawless homemaker.

So, on that first day, the door closed behind Joe and I waved at him as he drove away. Then I looked at my baby. We had been left alone together; the world was pretty sure I could keep him alive! How exhilarating.

I changed the baby's diaper and fed him, then carefully put him down when he fell asleep. I spent the next half hour trying to put together a workout outfit from the 3 things in my closet that actually still fit. Then I popped in an exercise DVD. I was most of the way through the warmup when I heard the baby wake up. I left the video going while I ran to get the baby and put him on his mat where I could watch him and work out at the same time, then I tried to coordinate myself with the video people. So far, so good. I was stretching and watching Raleigh out of the corner of my eye. He was flailing his arms and legs around. He started to suck on his hand because he was already hungry again. His face turned in my direction, even though he couldn't see very far yet, and he had this worried expression on, so I started talking to him. "HI RALEIGH!" I said, punching at the air in time to the music. "Hi baby boy! You are so sweet!" But yelling happy things at him only worked for so long. The hand-sucking intensified. He'd start crying soon. So I sighed and paused the video and fed him. He fell asleep and I finished exercising and got a quick shower. That 30 minute video took more than twice as long as it should have, but at least I'd gotten through it.

By the end of that day, I had run the washer and dryer. I think I'd also collected most of the dirty clothes from around the living room. I hadn't: vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen, written, found a work-at-home career, prepared dinner, folded Laundry Mountain, caught up with any of my overdue correspondence, or paid bills. Raleigh had somehow soaked up the entire day.

And so I learned what was wrong with those stay-at-home moms who never get anything done. It's that "mom" part. You see, babies don't grow on milk. They grow on the time they slyly steal from you while you have all these great plans about what you're going to do all day. That is why my baby is enormous.

That's the important thing, though. That Raleigh is enormous. I mean, I figured out that my main thing right now is to make him happy. I think that every smile I put on his face right now will make his little growing brain different and better forever.

As long as his naps are unpredictable, I'll uselessly hold him while he sleeps instead of wasting my time by trying to escape - he'll just wake up two minutes after I start doing something useful, anyway. When he lets me put him down for a few minutes, I'll clean. When he goes to sleep for the night, I'll stay up til 3 AM so I can do things I used to do before I had a baby. See? I'm figuring it out!

My new job isn't to keep this place spotless, or cook a lot, or even change out of my spit-uppy clothes before Joe gets home (the spitup is also encrusted in my hair, so really there's not much of a point.) My new job is to make Raleigh smile. Yeah, I can do other things, and I will keep learning how to be efficient and fit everything in. Mostly, though, I'm going to get nothing done, love my baby, and be stupidly happy.

Game Changed

September 12th, age 5 weeks and 5 days, Raleigh became something completely different. He'd been changing anyway; we noticed that he had longer waking periods instead of the newborn sleep-eat-sleep-eat schedule. Along with the longer waking periods, he developed the ability to be bored. He would no longer tolerate lying on his back in one place for long, or even being held chest-to-chest rather than face-out. He preferred to stare at the ceiling fan (oh man how he loves to stare at the ceiling fan) or the kitchen light fixture or computer monitors. He also started making these sudden excited single-syllable vocalizations, like an OH or EH, just out of nowhere while he was looking around. You wouldn't think that would be something to be just super in love with, but it totally is.

But the big thing, the game-changer, was the smile. Raleigh was on his back looking up at me and I was talking to him and making excited faces, seeing if he could react yet...and he smiled. I kept talking, thinking it was probably just another accident, but his smile widened into a mouth-wide-open big gummy grin.

Perfection.

He was noticing me.

"Joe," I said, "Come here! He smiled. Talk to him and make faces at him." And Raleigh did it again.

It's like he graduated. Evolved in a second, like a Pokémon. One minute, he was a warm floppy fragile responsibility on the other end of a really short leash, and the next, he became my very own sweet happy little buddy.

We're a team now. I would be incredibly sad if he died. And if he were to ever get a horrible sickness, I would definitely go through it instead of him, if I could. I just want him to always smile for me.

One Month

Raleigh was born a month ago. I had no idea he was going to grow so fast.

Life was easier and more fun without a baby. Who would've thought that having a little helpless person who needs to be fed every couple of hours would make such a difference, right? I miss the freedom of our old life. I miss "us." I think no one can know what a responsibility and what a change it is to have a baby, and how serious of a decision it really is, until they're there.

So, I'm overwhelmed and sad sometimes. And tired and bored and disconnected. And guilty, because I have a healthy and happy little guy and there are so many out there who can't have that and I just shouldn't be allowed to feel anything but 100% ecstatic.

I hate I'm not one of those moms who posts on FaceBook every other day about how I didn't know it was possible to love like this, my heart is 300x bigger and the world is made out of glitter and smiles now. He was supposed to make me feel all different and good and mom-like when he was born. I was supposed to go from "Is this really going to be okay?" to "YYYYYYYEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!," not just get stuck at "Is this really going to be okay?"

I know it will be. I also know it would be a lot more okay if it was noon right now. Seriously, I shouldn't even publish this post, my mood is so dependent on how sunny it is outside that I'll be a completely different person in 12 hours. But this is when I had time to write, so oh well.

Soon Raleigh will be able to do stuff. He'll smile and notice me. I'll get used to life this way. My body will go back to normal. Everything will be okay.

Also, though, when he's sleeping, he's literally the cutest and most wonderful thing I have ever seen. I can't stop taking pictures of him. When he has one of his little accidental smiles, I smile back and I laugh and I see if I can get him to do it again (can't yet.) When he's making little zombie noises and looking around and flailing his arms and legs, I just stare and think how much I need to get it on video before he learns how to control his limbs. When he's awake, I want to hold him so he'll never feel alone. It takes me twice as long to go grocery shopping now because I keep stopping in the middle of the aisles to kiss his little face. It's nice to cuddle him, to have him all curled up asleep on my chest, finally content. When he wakes up hungry and I lift him out of the bassinet and bring him to lay with me for a sleepy feed, and he doesn't wake up, just latches on with one of his hands resting on me and his little perfect eyes closed...I guess that's when I feel the way I'm supposed to.