photo party.

oh, my... alasdair is ONE and many days. holy. crazy. it's been a week of reminiscing for sure. we threw a party for him last sunday, two days before the actual big day. lots of friends and babies were over and I failed to take photos. what? yes, I know. so I'm depending on those lovely friends to send photos and when they do, I'll post them. today's 'photo party' starts with some shots taken by uncle jason and cousin madailein in boise. a alone and with stella... so sweet. the crying bit: at the birthday party. worn out. but then the cake came and he perked up enough to snack. i waited and waited on the cake in the face shot, but he failed to deliver... so picky and particular with each bite. a quality he must have taken from his father. uncle jason and aunt jeri sent him a killer radio flyer for his birthday. as soon as i put it together... well, just look at the photos. STOKED! so cute.

almost

it's official: no more snowmobiling until next winter's fallen snow. wow. we're still gazing upon at least 3 1/2 feet in our parking lot, but the road is open... after about 60 + hours of plowing. come on dirt.
I cannot believe that Alasdair will be one, ONE, in less than a month. that it was a year ago that I was nesting: waking at 5 am to spray off the exterior of the house, take out the trash, complete journal entries, wash and arrange Alasdair's baby clothes for the fiftieth time. a year ago that I was walking and bouncing and yoga-ing it up in hopes of his arrival. a year ago this time that I didn't realize he would not be early, but in fact 15 days late.... a year ago that he tested my patience and made me realize that he will do things in his own time, regardless of my efforts to push him forward. and now he stands tall and walks quickly. he loves animals and books and balls. he has developed a self outside of me and papa, and he's quite good at expressing that. my wee man grown up.
not quite.
and as much as I try to live in the moments, in his moments, it is sometimes hard. so, thank you dana, for this great reminder....

my lovely sister forwarded this on to me this morning. it's worth a read:
Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I
take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two
taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same
books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their
opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh
until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who
want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the
bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by
themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber
ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely
discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now.
Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling
rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all
grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they
are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the
pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and
what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations
--what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then
becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an
endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive
reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a
timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child
was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would
not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put
down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a
new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.
Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research
will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's
wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts
of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet
codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his
fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he
developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year
he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He
can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes
were made. They have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall
of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not
theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late
for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The
day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her
geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She
insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through
speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They
all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for
the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while
doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear
now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one
picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of
the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember
what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they
looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing:
dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the
getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and
what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small,
I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of
what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because
they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books
said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes
over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three
people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my
essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and
determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure
out who the experts were.