Jack Kaden

The birthday was a low key affair. No formal outfits, although the adults had champagne. Some neighborhood young ladies dropped by. Isabella and Ella. Jack made eyes at both of them. He had some cake and tried to grab some fire…

Interestingly Jack had not a clue that a) the party was for him, and b) it was a big day. He cleaned up on loot. Some great books and a new very loud toy from Gran-E and Grandpa Peter that has me walking around singing “at the car wash, yeah!” ALL the time.

As for us, it was a very anti-climatic day. Now that I have to call Jack a 1 year old, it’s pretty clear that he’s not, and in a way that’s really comforting. He’s truly crawling *I know I’ve been saying that for a while now, but I was fibbing for a bit there, it was really more like a craw-kerplunk*, and if you read any of those milestone lists he’s behaving like a pretty normal 9 month old.

Right now I am trying to figure out why it’s so important that he catch up developmentally by 2. Maybe it doesn’t matter? Who made up that rule anyway?

ANYWAY.

Jack had not one, but two grandmother’s here and he milked it for all it was worth (so did we).

Without these two ladies, and our family and friends I am really not sure we would have made it through the past year. We don’t know what else to say, so we hope you know how much we love you and are so grateful to have you in our lives. That goes double for Jack.

Sorry for the lack of posts. We’ve been on the road for the past week - first Colorado and now Wyoming. Jack has been an excellent travel companion. He had two 10 minute meltdowns on our plane to Denver, but frankly, I was about to have one myself…our plane circled for about 1 hour. It was fun.

He had a lovely birthday and a full and complete update of his reaction to a) cake and b) fire will be posted in full in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, this was the reason we were in Boulder.

Congratulations again Damema and Brandon. You throw one heck of a wedding!

I can’t help it LOL Cats crack me up. I am a huge dork.

Anyway.

No pictures today, just a quick update to let you know that Jack is not only crawling but he a) he took his first supported steps and b) he pushed himself up to a sitting position all by himself.

He’s 1 on Monday. I suspect there will be some posts of some kind of value between now and then.

Jack spent the weekend at the Shore. He went to the beach, and stayed up late, and spent some quality time with a tamborine emblazened with the image of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s praying hands. He was OBSESSED with the tamborine.

We think he’s going to rebel by becoming ultra religious. Or at the very least a Republican. That would be a very Alex P. Keaton thing to do.

Besides shaking the tamborine, he ate some sand (yes really), and talked back to the ocean and certainly was much more interested in the water this time around. We think the 70 degree ocean temp may have had something to do with it.

Ila coming back from the beach:

Jack, “eating” lunch:

It’s a bittersweet time of year here. I wake up at night convinced I am in the hospital. My scar from the c-section throbs at weird times of the day. Yesterday, I left the office very early to come home and be with Jack. It was better for me to be home, holding him, than reliving that harrowing cab ride alone.

I’m not being melodramatic. I swear. It’s dates, and times, and someone referencing their summer vacation, when I remember calling them from L&D to tell them I was on short term disability and couldn’t work… All of these things combine to shove, push, pull me back to that time. That time that I had my baby 13 weeks early.

A lot of preemie mom’s talk about the first “birthday,” the first “gotcha day” (when Jack came home from the NICU), the first “due date day.” They all mention that it kind of sucks. The whole thing, prematurity, the aftermath, the sights, sounds, smells, it all kind of sucks.

Except for this part:

This part is pretty awesome.