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By now we're down to something like HPPY BRHDY ANTY...they're GOOD! Anthony agreed, even managing to forget that he was kind of mad about wearing a rather dorky "Baby's 1st Birthday" crown...

He started with the frosting, then picked up the whole thing and tried to stuff it in his mouth. He may look just like his daddy, but there's some mommy in there too!

Here's his present from mom and dad.

Climbing + a good chance of broken bones = Anthony likes.

Anthony had a fun day today celebrating the big 0-1 with mom, dad and Grandma Char.

It is hard to believe it has been a year since two completely clueless people (this is the ONLY picture of me pregnant that shall ever appear on this blog. I made it as small as possible)...

...welcomed Anthony James Josephsen into the world. Somehow, he is not yet in therapy.

I used to be so glib when I was pregnant and people asked me if I was ready to be a parent. My stock reply: “A lot of people who are stupider than Brandon and I have managed to raise kids.”

(Of course, those people likely refrained from using one of those "listen to your unborn baby's heartbeat" things on their cat...)

At the time, of course, my biggest worries were how to lose 10 pounds after giving birth and how best to berate Brandon when he used expressions like “preggers.”

I wish I’d known then how hard being a parent is; I might have instead used my mental energy to figure out what I’d do with the baby once he was here (umm, probably NOT this).

I remember after Anthony was born, and I was moved to the recovery room at about 4 a.m. Anthony was still being checked out, and Brandon was in the waiting room until visiting hours started at 8. The nurse said it would take a few hours to finish Anthony’s tests, so I should try to sleep until they brought him to my room around 7.

It would be just the first of many times Anthony would keep me from getting my share of sleep: lo and behold, the little guy showed up around 5.

A normal woman would have swooped her baby into her arms, overjoyed at his early arrival and excited to start bonding. Me? I felt something akin to panic: “Should I pick him up? What if he wakes up? And starts crying? And I can’t make him stop? And Brandon won’t be here for THREE MORE HOURS?"

(The above offered as proof that I'm not an awful person...)

Fortunately for me, Brandon emerged not even an hour after Anthony, who, being just six hours old, of course slept the entire time.

But I had no way of knowing that.

I didn’t know much of anything.

As I look back, I am struck by how much I learned these past 12 months Such as:

…that giving your baby solid foods, while billed as a lovely bonding experience, is really, after the 582,342nd spoonful of puree, a soul-sucking chore that makes you yearn for the day when your child to refuse to eat anything but fish sticks and gummy bears, provided he is feeding them to himself.

…changing a diaper is not that gross but touching a gummed-up Cheerio is stomach-turning.

…a daycare kid gets up to 20 colds a year and a cold lasts two weeks, so a parent isn’t crazy for thinking their kid is always sick (so says Anthony’s pediatrician). If your child is in daycare, phrases like “he’s starting a cold,” “he has a cold” and “he’s getting over a cold” are useless. Just say “he’s in daycare” if someone recoils from his crusty nose and pack-a-day smoker’s cough.

… if you want your baby to sleep through the night, bathe him at 6, feed him at 7 and put him to bed at 8. (I am being entirely facetious here, obviously, as Anthony is not exactly the poster child for sleeping through the night. The joke is that every time – and I do mean every time – we go to our pediatrician, he tells me to “bathe him at 6, feed him at 7 and put him to bed at 8” if I want Anthony to sleep through the night. He says this whether I ask for sleep advice or not. He has said it whether Anthony was 9 months old or 3 days old. He has said it to me; he has said it to Brandon. And the funniest part is, every time he says it, he acts like he’s sharing some newly-discovered nugget – no, gem – of wisdom and that he’s letting me and only me in on the secret.)

…you can throw your hands in the air and avoid even a half-hearted attempt to deal with any problem your child has – fever, cough, runny nose, crying, not eating, not sleeping, etc. – if you blame teething. The first time Anthony gets detention, I am going to tell everyone he is teething.

Rereading this, I think I sound a little cynical, perhaps to make up for the sap of a week ago…but of course, I also have my share of warm and fuzzy sentimental memories about the past year.

But do I really want to make people gag by sharing them (like how Anthony’s laugh is the best sound I can even imagine, how my favorite moment of the day is when I pick him up at daycare, how sometimes when I watch him play I nearly cry because I know how lucky we are to have a happy and healthy little boy, how sometimes when he wakes me up at 3 a.m. and I’m sooo tired and just want to go back to bed I end up holding him for a few minutes longer than necessary just because I love the way his warm little body feels) in this already too-long post?

Suffice it to say I love Anthony more than anything on earth, and I hope today will be just the first of many times when I'll have the honor of saying, "Happy Birthday, Sunshine!"