The other day, I took Ezra with me to Old Navy. He walked in the store and suddenly his eyes lit up, he shrieked for joy, and then? This happened:
Yes, he ran up to the little girl mannequin, gave her a hug, pet her hair, and then tried to hold her hand. He didn’t want to leave her.
And this, you guys, is why I need to get Ezra some more friends. Mama may be an introverted loner, but baby sure ain’t.
I’ve been remiss in blogging duties. And most other duties. So much going on, so much to do, so much. I’m planning on kicking off the New and Improved™ Version 2.0 of this website in the beginning of March. Until then? iPhone pics for everyone! Lucky, lucky you.
A couple weeks ago, Ezra said his first real word: car. Or “Ca! Ca! Ca!” shouted at every car that drove past us as we were sitting outside of Starbucks on a Sunday morning. The next day, he ran up to me as I was cooking dinner and started pointing wildly at the block of cheese on the counter and making the sign for ‘eat’ while saying “shees! shees!” Car and cheese. That pretty much sums up the priorities in his life right now. I could pretty much die from how adorable he is when he’s getting all excited over cars and cheese.
When I was pregnant, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to freak out over milestone stuff—that whether my baby was fast or slow at walking or rolling over or talking or whatever, it wouldn’t be a big deal, because it all works out in the end and there’s no use stressing over it. Come kindergarten, it doesn’t really matter who was running across the living room at nine months and who was taking their first timid steps at fifteen months.
I’ve been pretty good about this so far. Mostly. But all the froufrou ‘what, me worry?’ nonsense meant nothing when all the baby development guidelines were telling me my 15-month-old son should be saying at least three words and I knew he wasn’t saying any. Or when my friend’s eight-month-old was already saying mama and dada .
So maybe I was freaking out. A little bit. But I tried to keep it down because obviously Ezra is a crazy awesome genius. He’s smart and social and expressive and he babbles all the time omg nonstop and his receptive vocabulary is pretty darn huge. Deep breath, lady.
So I just kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
And then when he was happily yelling at the cars, I didn’t even realize it at first. He was pointing at every car and it still took me forever to connect the dots. Oh! Car! He’s saying car! And I realized that he’s been making that sound a lot lately so… I just totally missed it. I have no idea what other words I’ve missed—he’s being raised bilingually so I wouldn’t even understand any Spanish words he tried to say. And now I feel like a bit of an idiot.
But my kid? He’s a frikken’ genius.
BONUS VIDEO for making it to the end of this post: Ezra ‘talking’ on the ‘phone’:
Ezra is amazing.
It’s such a crazy age, right around now. He wants to be everywhere, at once, and he usually succeeds. Nothing is interesting for more than a few seconds. He loves food one day and hates it the next. He has a constant death grip on one of my fingers and he never wants to be alone and he wants to play in the cat food or bang things on the tv or stand at the front door and jiggle the knob (He can reach the knob now? Wait, what? When did this happen?). He’s teething, like all the time, 24/7, hardcore. It makes him fussy and whimpery, but he’s handling it way better than I would, so I can’t even complain. I don’t want him to watch much tv, you know, but sometimes I just wish he would anyway. I wish I could just curl up on the couch with him and watch—I don’t even care. Thomas and Friends or Dora or whatever, anything, just so we could sit still for more than 30 seconds. But TV is so boring, mom!, and there’s a ball of loose cat fuzz on the carpet that needs to be inspected and DVDs that need be thrown off the shelf and…here we go, nonstop party time, and didn’t you know, naps are for babies, mom!, let’s go go go!
But, goodness, he’s just delightful. He’s finally starting to walk, little cautious steps, looking for approval the whole way. He stops to clap for himself after a few steps and squeals with delight. He’s so happy, so loving, so sweet. So full of excitement and laughter. He sings along and dances and claps whenever he hears music. He plays pat-a-cake games and chases the cats down so he can hug them and he growls like a monster when we’re having tickle fights. He’s a charmer, a total flirt with the grandmas in the grocery store aisles. He loves staring at our faces and trying to figure out where the nose is, the eyes, the mouth… he loves his belly button and he loves having his head rubbed and his ears cleaned. He’s obsessed with brushing his teeth, or at least with chewing on the toothbrush for hours.
And sometimes, right in the middle of the baby-step-taking, cat-chasing, teeth-brushing, dirt-eating, breathless-laughing, living-room-destroying, nonstop BabyPartyFest, he comes up to me and wraps his little arms around me and plants a big juicy kiss on my face and buries his head in my neck, and…yeah. I knew when I had a kid that I would love him like crazy of course, but I didn’t expect it to come in fits and starts like this. One minute you’re on the ground playing with a toy car and trying to figure out what to make for dinner and thinking about how tired you are and all the bills that need to paid and who’s going to clean the dishes and and and… and then bam, a tiny crazy monkey baby is dangling from your neck and mushing his face up against yours and suddenly you can’t even breathe because you’re heart is just exploding right out of your chest.
I finally got the new iphone. I sense a lot a silly videos in my future.
Happy birthday, my dear, sweet, amazing, perfect little boy.
I don’t have words big enough to express how I feel about you. It’s a lot like love, only it’s more like love times infinity to the moon and back again. Plus a million. And then some. They day you were born and they first laid you on my chest, I thought my heart would explode from love. I thought it was stretched to its very limit and I couldn’t hold even a smidgen more of love. But somehow, it did. Somehow, every day, my love for you grew. My love for your dad grew as I watched him be an amazing father to you. Every day, my heart gets bigger and bigger. I don’t even know how I’m able to stand up anymore with all this fierce love coursing through me.
You lean in for cuddles, you zoom around the house begging us to chase you, you give us big sloppy kisses, you babble for hours and hold our hands and clap and dance whenever music’s playing. You are so funny and charming and sweet and brave and strong. You’re the happiest person I’ve ever met.
This year has had its share of challenges and worries, but it’s been the most rewarding, fantastic year of my life. It’s such a pleasure and a honor to be your mom. Sometimes I feel as if a silly little girl like me hardly deserves all this happiness, but when you clasp my fingers and cuddle into me and plop a big kiss on my cheek, I realize: we were meant for each other. You, me, your dad. All of us. We were meant to be a family. This little, perfect family.
I love you, little monkey.
Ezra and I are sick: :(
We both came down with ugly cough/cold/virus things last Tuesday and we’ve spent most of the time since then on the bed in our jammies, eating lots of soup (me) and drinking lots of milk (baby), watching hours of Teen Mom (me) and Yo Gabba Gabba (baby) online, and being really cute (baby) and really whiny and complainy and annoying (me).
I am such a total big fat whiny cranky baby when I’m sick. I need constant time and attention and care. Like, a fully dedicated staff that runs around at all hours making sure I’m comfy and that I haven’t missed a dose of medicine and that the TV is at the correct viewing angle and that I’m not too hot and I’m not too cold and that there’s an endless supply of warm honey tea and trashy gossip mags and jello and homemade soup. That’s all I ask for. That and a bottle of NyQuil D.
But with a real (and way less whiny and cranky) baby who’s sick too, I’ve been forced to put on my big girl panties and take care of both of us. Without the NyQuil. Saying it’s been a little challenging for me would be an understatement, I think. And just seeing his poor little body wracked by another coughing fit breaks my heart a little bit. He’s a total trooper though. In between the coughing and the snot attacks, he’s been laughing and playing and clapping and dancing and being the cutest thing ever. He’s way more mature than his mom, for sure.
We’re on the mend. I think. I hope. We better be. Because this week? Oh, goodness. This is the birthday week. The Birthday Week. Because Ezra? He’s almost a year old.
… okay, I’ve got to go lay down again now.
