Birthday Moments

Andrew just had his first birthday. Why is that so hard for me to believe? Well first of all, the past two years has flown by faster than ever. I got pregnant in November of 2002, Greg deployed to Afganistan in May of 2003, Andrew was born 4 short months later, on September 3rd. From there, it's been sleep deprivation (for me), hours and hours of nursing (in the first few months, it was 1/2 hour feedings about 8 times a day -- that's 4 hours a day!), thousands of diapers, more learning (the wild ride of motherhood), and tons of communication (the stuff having a baby does to your marriage!). No wonder I can hardly remember any of it! From what I can remember though, it's been good. Hard but good. And its' such a great feeling to look at Andrew and be able to say, "I really like this person. He's very cool." I'll be spending the next 17 or 18 years of my life with him, so that's a good thing to realize.

Andrew is almost walking. Sometimes when he's not paying attention, he'll stand by himself while studying something in his hands. Today he squatted down to pick up a football, then stood up. When we all cheered for him, he looked kind of surprised, but then just went for it and clapped for himself as well.

He says "Uh-oh!", "Hi-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya!" (hello), "Da-g-g-g-g" (dog). He loves to play with my cell phone (he's only allowed to when it's off -- radiation!). He'll flip it open and say "Hi-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya!", looking all pleased. However, if I put him on the phone with a real live person, he shrieks at me and pushes the phone away. Oh well. No performances here, it's the real deal or nothing at all!

For his birthday on Friday, Greg, Jill (Greg's mom), Joycee, Jom and Sebastian went to downtown Binghamton to see this swingin' big band play called George Gee and the Make Believe Ballroom Orchestra (georgegee.com). A section of the main drag was closed off for it, and before the show there was a swing dance lesson, so there was all kinds of dancing going on during the show, and it was great fun. Unfortunately, Joycee had just given blood that day, so that was her excuse for not dancing, and Sebastian was scared, but besides that we all jumped in with both feet. Afterwards, we went to J. Michaels, a restaurant Hannah works at, where she served us tasty desserts. To finish off the night, we went to The Olde Tea House, a Japanese tea house chain that serves something called Bubble Tea, among other things, which is a tea slushy with tapioca balls in the bottom. Super good. We ended up getting home at around 12:30am, and Andrew almost made it through the whole night (he fell asleep in the car on the way back).