Happy first birthday, my love

Sofia is One Year Old.


Dear Sofia,

Happy Birthday, my girl! Today we celebrate you, your first year with us, and the many years to come. It wasn't too long ago that we met, this twinkle in my eye and flicker in my womb



We watched you grow



and grow



and our anticipation grew along with you.



We named you on the day we found out you were our daughter.



Then, on the most incredible day of my life, August 16th, you slipped out of my womb (or more like wrestled) and will remain permanently in my heart.





We were filled with our fears about being parents, and our wondrous joy at meeting our own personal miracle.



You were so impossibly tiny, so incredibly perfect.



The most beautiful newborn I'd ever seen.






Walking into the house with you for the first time was so surreal. I couldn't believe it. Here you were! Finally, our beautiful daughter in her very own home. Our new family of three. I've never felt so blessed.



Those first days home with you were so much fun. We had lots of visitors, and we all sat around admiring you, being with you, cuddling you, and enjoying each other. You were the star! A sleeping star, but we all loved you so very much.





You grew so quickly, changing every day. We loved to kiss every inch of you!






By two weeks old, you were positively chubby!




In the blink of an eye, you were smiling, and nearly 1 month old!







That fall, you and I went for so many walks together. I loved being out with you, showing you the places I loved and just being together. Always, I talked to you, forever, I loved you. Your personality began to shine through and I'd get glimpses of the person you were becoming. No longer a newborn, but my baby.




At two months, your smile was plentiful, and you started to laugh! I've never heard a more beautiful sound than your precious giggle.





Every stage brought new joys, new discoveries, and lots of love. Each month that passed made me more grateful that I was chosen to be your mother.




You dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween,



and started sitting in your Bumbo, happy with your new view of the world.








Soon, it was winter.


We would bundle up and sit in front of the fire as a family.



You loved your first Christmas tree, and made an adorable elf!



Christmas brought family and fun! You started to show an interest in toys, and began wanting something in your mouth at all times.







We started our own family tradition in Kings' Day. You had a good time eating your new toys and sitting in your high chair for the first time!




And still you kept growing. You could sit by yourself, and loved to read stories and snuggle with Mama and Papa.





We got to visit your family in Venezuela, and you had a great time! You laughed with everyone, and were able to swim in the ocean! The sand was your favorite part.





You really started to eat foods other than breastmilk, and we discovered that you absolutely adore berries!




The winter was long, and I ached to get back outside, for spring and flowers. It was so fun to introduce you to grass and playgrounds!






Spring slipped into summer, and you began to really explore your world. You started to crawl, to stand up on things, to express your opinions. And girl! You have a lot of opinions!



You had your first boat ride, and your first dip in a lake.




I turned around, you were eleven months old, started to take some steps, cutting your first teeth, and rapidly becoming a toddler.






You have given us the most incredible year. I still can hardly believe that you are my daughter, that I've been blessed so much. I love waking up to you in the morning, I love giving you a bath at night. I love your kisses, your wave, your babbles and your very first words. I love how you read stories, and how you kiss babies and kids. I love your laugh. Most of all, I love you, my big one year old girl. I am so excited for your second year and all the years beyond.

She's ONE

I don't have my pictures up yet, but newsflash! SOFIA IS ONE YEAR OLD! I get all teary thinking about her and the incredible year we've had. Our every day miracle.
She had a fantastic birthday weekend--complete with THREE birthday cakes, lots of food, friends, presents and love. I'll be back shortly with a complete photo update.

My Cinderella

Remember that feeling you used to get as a kid on Christmas Eve? That butterflies-in-the-stomach, anticipation, over-stimulated excitedment? Well, that's me.
I'm getting so excited for Sofia's party--I'm so giddy and shaky it's silly. I mean, it isn't that big of a deal. It is a backyard bbq with cake. It is the philosophical side, I guess. I'm totally mushy about my girl, and the fact that we get to celebrate one whole year together, one year as a family, one year of her living and breathing and crying and being, is just overwhelming.
Is it going to be like this on every birthday? For Every kid?
I mean, she isn't even going to remember today, or Saturday (her actual birthday) or Sunday (the day or her party). She'll probably be tired and whiny and have hurt teeth and wonder where all the people who are trying to hold her are coming from. But to me, it means something more, and I'll remember all the feelings leading up to this day, just as I'm remembering all the feelings leading up to her Birth Day, the day she was born.

I still feel that she is a dream. Like Cinderella, at midnight she'll just disappear.

Last night, I was rocking her before putting her to bed, and her chubby little arms wrapped around my chest and she sighed and snuggled my bosom. I held her close, and couldn't believe this was real. How can I be so lucky to have this person in my life? How can she love me so? She's just too perfect to be real.

But she's not, not really. She whines. She fusses. She cries. She gets mad. Like all kids, some days I want to send her to live with the gypsies. Or at least let Grandma take her for the afternoon. But most of the time? It's a dream.

It's life-changing, this thing called birth, and each birthday is the memory of that day, with the person they have become blowing out the candles, and it is hard to wrap your mind around.
Life is real, and that clock will never strike twelve, even though I constantly feel like it is 11:59.
So, I finished her little party hat (complete with feather boa), and got the party decorations. I have plans for food, and will bake cakes tomorrow. Her portraits are scheduled, and we've been birthday shopping. All this preparation and anticipation to celebrate that incredible instant that her soul joined ours.



And so lucky we are.

A New Journey

I'm on a new mission, and I need whatever help I can get. I'm ready to no longer consider myself overweight.
I'm not certain that I'm ready for what that entails. You know, all the right choices. The will power, the continuity of it all. The fact that eating right today doesn't make up for yesterday. Working out this week doesn't excuse you from next week. Forever.
But it isn't just weight.
It is health.
I am basically a healthy person, but I want to stay that way. I want activity and fun to be part of my life for the rest of my life. I want to pass that love of activity on to my children. Sedentary moms just aren't as fun.
So, I'm making choices. I'm trying. I don't always succeed; sometimes I do. I need to make the successes happen more often than the mistakes.
I need a goal. Perhaps one that isn't weight-related. I'm on the prowl for a 5 k or a 10 k.
Please to ignore the coke I just drank.

Win a Baby Carrier

http://www.alongfortheride.biz/Win-a-Free-Beco-Butterfly-and--Beco-Toy-Carrier-s/49.htm

This is for a contest to win a Beco Baby Carrier. Enter! Sofia and I LOVE baby-wearing.

Planning for the FIRST

Sofia turns one on Saturday. Oh my hell.

How can it be nearly one year ago? One year ago today I was hugely pregnant,



Overdue, and just begging the baby to dislodge.



Forgive me, but I might get a mite nostalgic the rest of this week.

A Plan

We might have a plan. A much-needed direction. I'm so excited about it, and I only hope my husband is, too.

My husband is a stay-at-home Dad. For the most part, he likes it. He has a relationship with his daughter that most dads just dream of. He is an incredible father, and they are both benefitting from this arrangement. But. Being a stay at home parent is hard. It is a job that never ends, and a job that is un-glorified. Especially for a man, and especially for a Latino Man. He feels that he doesn't have a job, as much as I try to convince him otherwise. He doesn't want to find a group of Stay-at-Home Dads, the way that most stay-at-home moms do. That just isn't for him. He is lonely. Feels like he doesn't have a direction.

I think we've found a way to keep the stay-at-home parenting, yet have him and me working. I would love to be the stay at home parent, but since my job pays more, and carries the benefits, it just isn't feasible. Living on one income these days is so very difficult, and we're barely treading water. I'm knocking on wood and sending good thoughts to the universe, and yes, praying that this new plan goes to fruition.

Keep us in your thoughts.

Baby Signs

A few months ago, when frustrated with my daughter's means of communication (mainly whining, at the moment) I began to introduce some baby signs. A little late to the game, I realize, but I hoped it would help us both. In the past month, we have mastered waving hello and goodbye, and blowing kisses. Neither of which is an actual baby sign. Details.
The past few mornings, Sofia has decided 4 am is the wake-up time of choice. She's still tired, but doesn't particularly want to sleep. So, I gather her groggy-eyed from her bed, and lay her down in ours, in hopes that she'll get bored and go to sleep. Rather than sleep, we get hands on our noses, feet in our stomachs, and a sitting, standing baby demanding attention. In a half-assed attempt from a sleepy mama to get her to LIE. DOWN. ALREADY. I pat the bed, and say "lie down, sweetie". So, this morning, I asked Little Lady to lie down. She grins, leans over, and pats her little palm on the bed. Sitting up.
Little stinker. I think she's ready for baby signs after all.

Ella Rachel

We welcomed a new friend, a new member of the family yesterday-little miss Ella Rachel.
Announcment Here
I was honored and blessed to be a part of her arrival, and it was simply incredible.
There are no words to describe the feelings in a delivery room. When I gave birth last August, I felt Sofia's soul enter the room. I met my daughter. Watching my friend meet her own daughter, and experiencing birth not from the mother's perspective is a little different, but no less miraculous. All of a sudden, she was here, this tiny being with so much hope and promise. So much love.
Welcome to our world, Ella. You are stuck with us.

My Two Selves

I had a meeting with my boss today. I went...well...it went okay. Just okay. Sort of what I expected, but not what I'd hoped.

See, I've been falling in my job for awhile. First, I got pregnant. For 8 glorious weeks, I thought non-stop about that baby. I'd lost a baby before, and honestly believed that if I did not send love and thoughts into the universe at all times about my baby, talk to said baby incessantly, know exactly how big little baby was and what exact part of its anatomy it was developing that day, I would be responsible for killing the baby. So that is what I did. This had obvious consequences. Then, THEN, that baby died. Despite my constant talking to and thinking about. I had a (wonderful!) work review, and went (giddily) to an ultrasound that afternoon. Baby no longer alive. Perfect limbs, heart, head, body. Dead.
I floundered. How could I care about anything? Did nobody care? Nothing matters anymore. Work suffered some more.
Pregnancy and miscarriage pretty much summed up the next year, and then pregnancy pregnancy pregnancy the year after that. And then...labor. Obsessing about labor. When would it be? Why not now? Or now? So, I started maternity leave, and then my entire world shifted the instant my daughter was placed on my chest. My god. My reason for being. The only important thing in the world. I spend maternity leave dreading my return for work, sobbing over being away from her. She was/is my everything.

Only, that isn't the healthiest thing for either the person that IS the everything or the person that has made them the everything.

So, I returned to work, but only my physical body was there. The rest of me was home with my child, wrapped in her love. Sequestered in my mind. Work suffered some more.

I had another review not so long ago that didn't go so well. Surprise, surprise. Not badly, but not all sunshine and roses, either. Slowly, slowly, I've tried to bring myself back to work. Back to caring about what I do. I'm making improvments, I'm trying.

Problem is, though, I’ve been feeling in a rut lately. I am not excited about the work I do, and therefore, not as committed to it as I want to be. I need something to engage me, to be excited about work again. I am bored. My work is suffering because of it. In a company as progressive as this one, it is my fault for being bored, and need to get my ideas out there.

So, I talked to my boss. We scheduled this meeting. And she said, well, she said that I need to prove myself in the next six months. I've been given a project that I need to do well on. If this goes well, I am on the road to something of my design, something I can get excited about.

I hate that I let being a woman interfere with being a professional woman. I hate this dichotomy. I hate that I'm expected to have two selves; my personal self and my work self. Each one of these selves affects the whole, for good or for bad. The expectation we've placed on ourselves, as women, as moms, as employees is unattainable. To be the perfect mother, wife, daughter, sister. To be the perfect employee. There just isn't enough time.

The Right Side of the Bed

Sofia seems to have reclaimed herself. The grumpy gus that I left yesterday and sound asleep and snuggled against her papa's cheeks when I got home, her hot sweaty curls spreading across the sheets. About broke my heart, it did.
She dissolved in laughter all evening; giant belly laughs, subtle giggles, smiles, kisses and joy.
She woke up chatty and happy, giving kisses. She waved and blew me a kiss when I left, then snuggled into daddy's chest, giving him a hug. I'm SO jealous.
He is looking for work; to be stay at home dad AND work outside the home dad. We need him to. The hope is for him to get a second shift job, so we still don't have to send Sofia to daycare (not to mention paying for said daycare).
Anyone have a recipe for 100 dollar bills?

And we're back to Monday. Oh joy of joys.

I returned to work after having my daughter at the end of October 2007. My husband has stayed home since then, both of us jealous of the other. (damn health benefits!)

So, today was the first day that I was glad to go to work. Not jealous of my stay-at-home husband. Why, you ask? Because of some hugely important, self-motivating project I was beginning at work? Some monumental task that holds water over the day-to-day care of our daughter?

Or, could it be perhaps, that my teething, nearly one year old definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

You decide.

Friday!

I live for the weekends. Anyone ever feel that they are living only 2/7ths of their life?

I hate that feeling.