Happy 1st Birthday to William!

Newborn Will.

This past year with William has taught me many things.  First, having a baby can be a pleasant experience.  (No offense to Jack, but "pleasant," since it implies a general sense of calm enjoyment of things, cannot really be applied to Jack.  Jack is and always has been a wild ride: extremes of emotion, riotous good fun, non-stop movement, roguish charm, heart-melting displays of affection and loyalty, etc, but all at a much higher decibel than "pleasant").  William would finish nursing, and instead of either screaming his guts out or shooting up off my lap to go explore the world, he would smile, giggle, and play face games with me.  He would just sit on my lap, content to be with me.  When he wakes up from a nap, sometimes he just chatters in his bed by himself until I go find him, rosy cheeked, hair like a mad scientist, grinning at me.  He also falls asleep that way often, just chatting to himself in his crib. 

He's much squirmier now, but for a few months there every time I picked him up, he cuddled.  He would rest his head on my shoulder and stroke the nape of my neck with his hand, or hang on to my hair there.  A baby can do no wrong when they're pulling tricks like this.  And in the early months of unspectacular sleeping habits, I would occasionally just roll him off me in bed and sleep next to him.  When he'd wake up, sometimes all I would have to do was reach over and put my arm around him, and he'd settle back to sleep.  It was awesome, bizarre, and so endearing--as if all he needed was to know I was there.  But let's be real, some nights that absolutely did not work and there was much fussing and nursing and me waking up hours later in the rocking chair with intense lower back pain.

Pre-weight gain Will

I have stated that I was uncomfortable during my pregnancy with him.  So uncomfortable, in fact, that I was even ready to face my fear of dealing with a sleep-defying newborn again.  But then he was born, and then--he slept.  Those firsts few weeks of his life, Josh and I would look at each other in shock when Will would just drift off to sleep in the bouncy chair, or stay asleep when we'd put him in the bassinet, or sleep from feeding to feeding.  Then around 3 weeks he woke up a bit more and had some normal-baby fussy spells for 4 weeks or so, but still!  Compared to the crash course in insomnia that was Jack's first year of life, William was a piece of cake. 

Weight gain has commenced.

Also, he ate (and eats).  Don't know what happened differently this time, but with Jack we had to supplement nursing with formula, almost from the very start.  It was stressful, and I pumped for the first 9 months to try to keep my supply up.  For whatever reason, this time around, my body figured it out, and I made more than enough milk, and William starting breaking the charts from about 8 weeks on.  He's been slimming down over the past few months since he started crawling and we're all pouting a bit over it.  That being said, he also eats real food.  By himself.  With his own hands.  He eats things like eggs, meat, bread, rice, beans, fruit, vegetables, yogurt, soup, shakshuka, ramen, fish...basically whatever we're eating.  It's mind-blowing. 

I know I'm biased, but he is a beautiful boy.  He was one of the most beautiful newborns I've ever seen (tied with Jack, of course), and then he just kept getting more luscious and delicious and squishable as he fattened up.  His hair is brown with the occasional golden sheen to it in the sunlight, and his eyes are dark, dark blue, with hazel or brown around the pupil (we have never been able to properly tell).  And he has lovely, long, black eyelashes.  I rather covet them.  And lucky for Will, he inherited Daddy's skin.  He is already tanner than Jack and I will ever be. 

The Weight Gain: Exhibit A (Around 8 weeks)

The Weight Gain: Exhibit B (Around 10 weeks)

The Weight Gain: Exhibit C (Around 6 months)

The Eyelashes: Exhibit A

The Eyelashes: Exhibit B

Two-toned eyes.  And food face.

So really there have been two Williams over the past year: pre-crawling Will, and post-crawling Will.  Pre-crawling Will was like a cherubic little sumo wrestler, who would sit in front of a pile of toys and happily play with them while I chased Jack around or cooked or whatever.  He sat for months before he could crawl (opposite of Jack, who was crawling around 5 months).  Finally around 8.5 months he managed to get his mighty girth up off the floor and the rest is a history of disaster and house disembowelment.  He took his first steps around 11.5 months, so it's about to get worse.

Pre-crawling Will

Post-crawling Will

It's like being able to move unlocked this dormant juggernaut inside of him.  When before I used to mostly just call him names like sweetie, little bug, and chunk-a-chunk, now it's mostly Wrecking Ball Will, mongrel, monster, William the Destroyer, etc.  William does not have the manic energy that Jack does, but he is like the much-touted honey badger when he wants something: he will keep at it, over and over and over again, refusing to give up or relinquish whatever it is he's after.  And then if  you take it away from him, he cries like his very world has shattered.  He also does this move that utterly terrifies me: when I'm holding him and he reeeeaaally wants down, he suddenly becomes an electrified, acrobatic, greased piglet, and usually I find myself holding onto a limb while the rest of him has plunged to the ground.  It is not my favorite move of his. 

Isn't he dashing?  Photo by Jeremy Meek (aka Uncle Chunk)

He loves to play chase games and peek-a-boo through the stair rails. Sometimes he has so much fun doing this that he gets "fun drunk," and he can no longer crawl without collapsing in giggles.  Or hurtling backwards off the stairs, arms up, laughing all the while (we do catch him).  He loves balls and can throw one and then chase after it and throw it again, shuffling all over the house, finding the dustiest corners and then eating gross bits of old pretzel.  Or Playdough (mother-of-the-year award moments). 

Sumo Will and Buzz Lightyear Jack for Halloween 2014

He is a happy boy.  He adores his family, and when he hears Josh come home he says "dada, dada" and starts booking it for the stairs to find him, chuckling and cackling to himself.  He loves to play with Jack, and although I don't think they look that much alike yet (different face and feature shape, although this could be due to Will's squishy cheeks), they have the same laugh.  Sometimes in the car they play this game where they make each other laugh by . . . get ready . . . looking at each other.  They whip themselves up into near hysterical laughing/shrieking fits.  One time I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that they were reaching out from their respective car seats and holding hands, and then my heart became a puddle of mom-joy.  Their play is always physical, and it usually ends with Jack doing something violent to Will. Thankfully, as aforementioned, Will is sturdy, and he holds up pretty well.  I have a feeling that in a year or two I will not be able to keep up with them and their antics.

Will loves music, and will coo along with my lullabies and bounce along to whatever music is playing.  We're pretty sure he's got a couple of words already: dada, ball, and bear (his best buddy).  His relationship with Bear is rather adorable.  He insists on nursing with him under one arm, which gets a bit awkward as he's rather big.  If he's ever been separated from Bear for a while and then they are reunited, Will starts laughing and saying "Buh buh buh" and then tackles Bear, embracing him and biting his nose. 

So to say William is of a calmer temperament than his brother is not to say he is gentler.  Will is rough.  I once found him with a handful of Jack's hair (Jack probably deserved it).  He hates diaper changes with all of his little soul and has perfected the roll-away move if I take my hands off him for one second to grab a wipe or whatever.  Basically I am just a punching bag while I nurse him.  He smacks my sternum over and over again with the flat of his palm (I think he likes the sound).  He grabs like 3 hairs at a time and yanks them out.  He swipes at my throat, pokes my eye, sticks his finger up my nose, in my ear, in my mouth and then scratches my gums.  And when I growl at him for this he usually just chuckles.

All the violence aside, my favorite time of the day with William is still usually when I'm nursing and rocking him right before bedtime.  I can hear Josh and Jack playing ninja turtle games together downstairs, and Jack's happy giggles float up to us in the bedroom.  In the wintertime the room is already dark, and shadows of bare trees move gently across the walls.  In the spring and summer the room is still light, that quiet grey of twilight that settles slowly through the house.  After I brush his teeth, I cuddle him up in the crook of my arm and sing him one of two favorite lullabies, Baby Mine, or A Dream is a Wish.  No matter how sleepy he is, he usually croons along: "Da-boo, da-boo.  Bah bah bah.  Ga-boo, Ga-boo."  Sometimes his eyes are very sleepy, lids lazily opening and closing; sometimes he stares right into my eyes, smiling and gurgling a bit.  He makes me feel loved, and that motherhood is even better than I hoped it would be.  Then usually the idyll is disrupted by him scratching me in the eyeball or knocking me in the mouth with his fist, and he ends up getting dumped in bed rather unceremoniously.  But then I blow kisses and he blows kisses back, wraps his arms around Bear, and rolls over, chatting to himself, as I leave the room.

Happy Birthday, William!  Thank you for coming to our family, for being the answer to so many prayers, and for bringing your sweet, merry, hopeful, darling spirit to our home.  We are all better because of your life. 

William Hugh, Sweet and True

William's first birthday is in two days, and I have yet to document his birth (oops).  So I'm going to slide this in under the wire, and then see if I can follow up with a one-year tribute.

Being pregnant with William was uncomfortable.  I carried him high and had rib and back pain from like 22 weeks on.  The last two months I waddled and groaned and wondered how I would possibly make it until the end (sorry Josh).  My belly was a "bullet" as one of my OBs kindly put it; described by others as "bouyant" and "perky."  It looked like I had swallowed an enormous basketball.  William, bless him, was a steady mover in the womb, but I remember feeling like I had the Incredible Hulk in there.  I knew there were "supposed" to be layers of placenta, amniotic fluid, blood, muscles, skin, etc, separating his appendages from the outside of me, but it generally felt like he was about to kick his way out of my skin at any moment.  And he did succeed in leaving me with a herniated belly button and diastasis when all was said and done.  All complaints aside, it could have been much worse, and what I have to show for it more than compensates for 9 months of discomfort.

He was due on April 22nd, 2014.  On Sunday, April 13th, I remember being spectacularly uncomfortable, pretty much everywhere.  Nevertheless, we had friends over that night for sukiyaki and I somehow managed to waddle around, chopping a million vegetables, readying the piles of food, and then stuffed myself.  I went to bed feeling like my whole body was going to break at any moment.

The next morning (April 14th, 2014, the auspicious day!) I went to my sister Michelle's in Alexandria to FINALLY bring her an "after baby" meal (she had my nephew 5 weeks earlier).  Dare I repeat the refrain: I was feeling exceptionally uncomfortable that morning, with about a billion Braxton-Hicks contractions (this was nothing new; basically the last 3 months of my pregnancy were like that).  And so it was that around 11:45am, just as I went to sit down on her couch to read Jack a story, I felt my water break.  For all who are concerned about Michelle's couch, never fear, it was not the big ol' gush they talk about in the movies.  It continued to "break" for like 2.5 hours, so at first I was a bit perplexed as to what on earth was going on down there.  Then when it kept coming I figured that this was the real deal.  I called Josh, who was not expecting the "my water broke" phone call, since this was a week and a day before my due date, and with Jack they had to break my water after 14 hours of labor.  I called the doctor, who told me to waste no time, bustled Jack into the car with several of Michelle's towels wrapped around me, then made the drive home to Reston.  At this point I actually had a real contraction or two, but nothing serious.

Josh met us at home and there followed the flurried packing of the hospital bag (which I obviously hadn't done), wishing I had showered that morning, or at least put on make-up, and wishing I didn't have to deal with the waters breaking (still). 

I became extremely emotional at the moment of leaving Jack.  He had fallen asleep on the way home, and I watched him in his crib, unaware of the event that was about to change his life forever.  I felt that leaving him to go have another baby was suddenly the hardest thing I'd ever had to do--the moment of inescapable change, when it would no longer be just Jack and Mommy being best friends all day long.

But that water kept breaking and the OB had been adamant about wasting no time in getting to the hospital, so Josh gave me a blessing that all would be well, and we left our slumbering Jack in the loving care of Auntie Michelle and 5 week-old cousin Aiden.

The ride to the hospital was, in many ways, surreal, because it was so totally different from the ride to the hospital when Jack was on his way.  Then, I had been past the point of talking, focusing on trying not to vomit into the flimsy grocery bag I'd brought.  We'd had to stop and wait out contractions on our walk from the parking lot to the hospital; with William, Josh and I were chatting amiably while I sat on my beach towel, occasionally experiencing a mild contraction here or there.

So no one was in any doubt when I waddled into the hospital with my beach towel between my legs and that enormous basketball of a belly as to why I was there.  I got into my delivery room around 3:45pm, and they asked me if I wanted an epidural.  I said: "most likely, but I don't think I'm quite there yet" as contractions had only just started to become decently uncomfortably.  The nurse assured me that things would be heating up pretty quickly, so if I wanted one, I should just go for it.  So in came the anesthesiologist and he mixed up his drugs and put in the needle and about this time things really had started to get a bit hairy.  But alas, no relief from the drugs... for an hour, they did me no good.  I was at a 6 when the doctor first checked, and after that hour of increasing pain and much hand-crunching for Josh, I was only at like a 6.5.  The anesthesiologist came back for another couple attempts, but still no relief.  I was starting to wonder if I was going to be able to keep my cool and if Josh would have a working hand by the end of it.

Finally the anesthesiologist worked up some crazy cocktail of wondrous drugs and dumped it in the tubes and then, immediate relief.  Unfortunately this also meant that as far as I could tell, the lower half of my body was gone.  Couldn't feel a thing down there.  Leg-free Ann Marie.  "I think I overdid it," was the anesthesiologist's dry response, with a sigh.  For a few minutes I was able to relax, but then I started shaking all over, uncontrollably, and kept almost puking.  After a half hour of this, the nurse thought I might be in transition, and sure enough when she checked me, I was at a 10 and Will's head was right there.  So I went from a 6.5 to a 10 in thirty minutes, which was why my body was trying to shake itself to pieces.

Pushing was a bit of a joke since remember how I no longer had the lower half of my body?  I was legless, so when the doc asked me to isolate and use the muscles it takes to push out a baby, I kind of just started laughing.  At one point the doctor was honestly like: "I have no idea what you're doing." Neither did I, Doc. But somehow, muscle memory must have kicked in, and we started making progress. And then, after a mere half hour of this (compared to 2.5 hours of pushing with Jack) at 6:10pm, William Hugh was born: a beautiful, slimy, darling creature.  They plopped him right up on me and I got to see and touch my little Incredible Hulk.

He was an unassuming 7lbs 8oz, with a round little head, dark hair, squishy cheeks, and overall unsmooshed look (I was surprised).  When I think back on this moment a year later, I remember two strong emotions: relief, and love.  Leading up to William's birth, I had felt bittersweet as I contemplated this change in my life.  I was so excited to have him, but I wondered how it would be possible to love another baby as much as my Jack.  Jack already took up so much of my heart, thoughts, energy, everything, that it just seemed strange to be having a not-Jack baby.

All that wondering was dispelled the moment I held lovely William in those first minutes after his birth.  The love I felt for him was instantaneous, enveloping, total.  It was as sweet as grace; as natural as breathing.  That feeling has only grown.  It's like Will has filled a hole in our family that we didn't even know was there.

In the hours after his birth, I was full of peace.  It's possible some of this could be attributed to still being heavily medicated, but nevertheless, I felt like William had brought with him a spirit of peace and calm, as if he himself wanted me to know that I would survive having a newborn AND a Jack Toddler, and that all would be well.  And so it has been.

Happy Third Birthday to Jack!

 Last night, when I was putting Jack to bed, he consented to say his own good-night prayer (this usually doesn't happen).  And although I appreciate seeing the embryo of personal religious habits in my son, mostly I just liked hearing him talk.  I felt like I was let into the World of Jack: the things he thought most worthy of mention in reflecting on his day.

First, it was a prayer solely of "nanks" (or "thanks," as adult humans would say).  Not to berate my own child, but this is not typical of him.  He actually makes a lot of demands, all the time.  But back to the prayer.  He first thanked Heavenly Father for people: Mommy [and here he inserted: "That's you, Mommy"], Daddy, "me" [pointing to himself, in case I didn't know], and Will. And his Blankie, which is not a person, but might as well be, for all that we refer to it as "he" and because he is Jack's most faithful companion.

Then came the really important characters: Leo, Mikey, Raph, and Donny.  And here he got diverted in recounting that Leo battles Shredder, Mikey faces Rahzar, Donny/Tigerclaw, and Raphael/Fishface.  Then it was on to Thomas, Percy, James, and Luke, his friends from the Island of Sodor. 

He gave thanks for coloring, reading, watching shows, puzzles, wrestling, playing catch, climbing on top of the car (not my favorite activity of his).  He mentioned the "beautiful day," the neighbor boys he likes to play with, his Easter basket, his room, his bed, and our room and bed (try to guess which one he spends more time sleeping in...).  

At this point I told him he could close the prayer if he wanted to, and he did.  But then he seemed to like praying so well that he said another one, more or less repeating all the same favorites.  And then he told me to say a prayer, which I did, and when I mentioned his name, he said: "That's me, Mommy."

His bright, somewhat stream-of-conscious, chattering prayer played like a movie through my head.  All these swiftly flowing images and memories of a baby-turned boy in this third year of his life.

I see him stubbornly crouched in a pile of dirt in the parking lot, sifting it, dumping it, shaping it.  It's important, obviously, and "two more minutes" and an imperious hand are all I get when I tell him it's time to get in the car.

I see him jumping again and again, splashing, kicking, stomping, falling, finally rolling in one of the first early spring puddles.  I am nearly twitching at the thought of how much mud is inside his boots, soaking his sweatshirt, dripping into his mouth.  But winter was long, frigid, relentless, and it is the first puddle on the first day in the upper 60s, and I let him do it, and he is blissful.

I see his face at Disney World when we took him on his first fast roller coaster.  Staccato giggles, shrieks of delight, and then the ultimate symbol of Jack's love when it was done: reverting back to one of the three baby signs we taught him, begging for more.

I think of him in the grocery store when he's wearing his Batman sweatshirt/cape. If he knows someone is looking at him, he will take a mighty leap, strike a ninja pose, and say: "MY BATMAN!" (We're still working on "I'm").  Yesterday when we had construction workers coming in and out of the house while staining our deck, he would stand tall and stare each man square in the eye and declare: "My Raphael!"

I think of his flair for the dramatic.  He loves to role play.  He and Josh can act out all the major battles between the Ninja Turtles and their foes, as well as the Avengers.  This is a common refrain in our house: "Daddy, my be Donny, you be Tigerclaw" or "Daddy, my be Cap [Captain America], you be Hulk." "Daddy, you be Heo [Leonardo], my be Fresher [Shredder]."  "Daddy, my be Ironman, you be Hor [Thor].  We also like to do dialogue between the Tank Engines: Thomas and Percy, Gordon and Toby, Luke and Millie.  But never Sir Topham Hatt, who is almost always cross.

And then there are the duets.  Jack and I sing the "First Time in Forever Reprise" from Frozen a capella, with him holding his own part while I sing mine (so, a duet, like I said...).  He usually starts out being Elsa and I am Anna, and then we switch (Josh and William are usually assigned the parts of either Kristoff or Olaf, who do not actually have any participation in this song). And then we do it a million times more, and I usually end up forgetting which part I am, and he will stop the whole thing and correct me.  One time he told me he was going to do both parts, and he did, inasmuch as that is possible.

When I think of Jack I also think of the inevitable feeling of his toes in my cheek around five in the morning, or being slapped in the face when he flips from side to side.  Co-sleeping with a toddler is about as bad as it gets, and yes, it happens a lot in this house.  We swore we never would but parenthood can beat a lot of things right out of you.  So he starts out in his own room and usually ends up in bed with us at some point during the night, acrobatics and all. 

Jack is a boy of epic rages and darling reconciliations.  His tantrums are both awful and pitiable; awful because I am usually receiving the violent brunt of them, and pitiable because I can see in his red, mottled face and flailing limbs how the force of his emotions is bigger than his little body and brain can control.  He doesn't know what to do with it all.  And sadly as he's become more verbal so have his tantrums.  He learned "shut up" from Toy Story (grrr, jealous Woody in Toy Story 1...).  It is his go-to when he is mad, frustrated, mischievous, or just plain naughty.  Except that he pronounces it "sheppit" instead of "shut up."  So I get flailing fists and legs as well as a steady stream of "sheppit sheppit sheppit sheppit sheppit sheppit."  If you wonder how well I manage these moments, the answer is: not well.  Most of the time I have to remind myself that I am, indeed, the adult in the relationship.

But when he's back to himself, he woos us well with "Sowwy! You're my best hend [friend], just like Thomas and Percy!"  And lots of hugs, kisses, and readiness to dive back into all his favorite activities.

This morning we made birthday cupcakes.  I made the mistake of leaving him unattended with the jumbo-sized canister of sprinkles while I went to put Will down for his morning nap.  From Will's room I heard a sound that was eerily reminiscent of sand being poured from a bottle, and then I heard it again, several times, and I knew the sprinkles were everywhere.  It took me a full 40 minutes of non-stop cleaning to rectify the situation.  But the image of Jack, crouched like some sugar-crazed beast on top of the kitchen table, clad only in a diaper (correct, he is still not potty-trained), "fighting" all the bad-guy sprinkles, is inescapably loveable.  He fought all those sprinkles and beat them all into the ground, carpet, corners, electronics, and everything in the near vicinity of the kitchen table. "Foo-agh! Foo-agh!  Foo-agh!"  That is Jack's battle cry, and it resounded across the billions of slain sprinkles.

Today we also had an Easter egg hunt for playgroup.  He insisted on running around with his large green, yellow, and pink Easter basket, well before we had the egg hunt set up.  As I pushed William in a swing, I watched Jack scramble up a grassy hill on the other side of the park until he reached the ridge.  He ran along the top, shade and sunlight playing on his golden head, his Batman cape streaming behind, clutching the basket as he chased the other children through the chilly spring morning. 

I love my little three year-old.  He is part superhero, beast, ninja, imp, baby, and boy.  It's hard to remember what life was like before his wild, happy, loving, brilliant, lively, uncontainable soul lived among us.  Happy Birthday, Jack!  You are adored by your parents, brother, family, and friends.  Thank you for making life ever more meaningful, treasured, and fun.