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.