birthday boy

I cannot believe we've been doing this for a year. In some ways, it seems as if it's been 20 years...in other ways, like we just started doing this last week. Probably symbolic of how a parent feels...20 years older than they actually are...yet still feeling as if they don't know what the hell they're doing. Yep, that's about it. Sascha and I were reflecting a bit ago about the year, itself. It's been kind of a tough one. Ari's start-out was rough for us, we didn't take easily to parenthood (i.e. indentured serventhood), he didn't take easily to life on this planet, then working to get a house ready to sell, finding a place to live out here, moving out here...it's been...full.

And so, Sunday we celebrated Ari's first birthday. This day came on the down end of a 7-day monster-fest-extroardiaire. I don't know if it's a developmental thing - capping off the first year with a weeklong let's-see-if-we-can-get-mom-to-jump-off-a-cliff test - or if Ari was really suffering from some form of sickness. Sascha and I are both leaning towards the latter. The poor little bugger just hasn't been himself.

In that spirit, we gingerly set out Sunday morning to celebrate Birthday #1. We had big (i.e. foolish) plans. Pfizer was hosting a Family Fun Day at the Padres stadium (baseball)...a pasttime we try to never pass up...so we decided to celebrate at the ball park as well. Started the day with a little pre-party present opening, which (of course) called for a nap later. We ended up getting to the stadium about 90 minutes late, but what the hell. Ari had a blast - crawled on the grassy hill outside the stadium and "picnicked" on Cheerios, danced in the stadium to all of the kickin' music, flirted with Sascha's female co-workers. It was a lot of fun for us, as well. For one thing, I got to get out and have some adult conversation for a change. With beer. Not bad. My big social thing for the past month has been the weekly story hour at the San Diego Public Library. They don't serve beer at the library...and you can only sing "teddybear fingers, teddybear toes" so many times before you start to feel a little insanity creeping in around the edges. And so, the ball game was a welcome diversion.

We came home when Ari's meter was reading empty, had a rough afternoon but finally managed to pull it together enough for cake and presents that evening. The cake went over like gangbusters (God Bless Duncan Hines). I've never seen him eat anything new so fast and his attitude immediately changed from "what the hell are you doing to me?" to "dude, rock on". All sugared up and ready to go, he rip-roared through present-opening like a champ and played hard core until it was time for bed. All in all, a good day.