And One (Year)

Hi. It's Matt. Yesterday was my birthday. Just one more year gone by, kinda. Today marks the one-year anniverary of Bea coming home from the hospital. I believe it was three days before Bea came home that I was doing the evening shift at the hospital and gave Bea her first bottle. She pounded it in about 7 minutes, apparently a near record for a baby that age excluding the fact it was given to her by her Dad - apparently dads are less talented in the bottle department then moms. The next morning they told Melissa that Bea could come home the next day (my birthday). Well since Melissa was on bed rest for 90 days and including the the last 60 days in the hospital, and Bea was born another 56 days early, we weren't ready at all and we asked for an extra day to get ready. We had a crib that that was it. So I spent my birthday last year with my father-in-law with two shopping carts at Babies-R-Us and bought everything. It was like a $500 bill. At 10 pm on my birthday we just had finished dinner and Melissa essentially told me to hurry up and eat my piece of cake so we could open presents and keep on working or whatever we were doing.


Fast forward to yesterday when we had a nice birthday lunch with family and Melissa and I went out for a nice dinner and movie date. Not having to eat your food as fast as you can (before someone gets fussy) is pretty nice. Unlike our last date on Valentines day Melissa kept her food down (no flu yet). As you can see on the picture of me and Bea, it was a little chillier then normal. The average temperature is 63 degrees, so the snow and wind chill of 10 degrees or whatever it is wasn't appreciated. I told Melissa we have an equal chance of an 85 to 95 degree day as the cold weekend we've had.

We liked Bea a year ago, but a 12 month old (or in our case a 10 month old full term) is a lot, lot, lot more fun then a 2 month pre-term baby. Yesterday we had a long back and forth conversation to the tune of "AAAAAAAHHH" and today it was "YAYAYA". Other recent highlights including playing superwoman and flying towards her birthday balloon (with a huge grin and multiple vocal signs of pleasure), holding her hand or preferably letting her hold her little toy car while learning how to walk. She doesn't crawl yet, other then backwards into things and getting really pissed off or spinning circles, but she loves walking (with some assistance). She's generally a non-stop smiler with lots of laughs and head bobs (to the beat of a good tune). The enormous grin when waking her up and the non-stop dialogue when changing her are pretty good too. Basically Melissa and I are having a blast with her.

I wonder what next year will bring.