Climb Every Everything

First things first, Anthony would like to wish Happy Birthday to Grandma Dianne! He hopes she enjoys her cake and presents as much as he enjoyed his.

Meanwhile, the little guy continues his steady assault on our home. It's funny, because whenever someone asks if Anthony is walking and I again have to say no (because he's not, OK???), their next remark is, "You should be glad. Once he's on his feet, you won't have a moment of peace!"

Which is fine, except that on the motor skills development continuum (cute blob... cute blob that rolls over... %@!*, that's not where I left him a minute ago!... crawling... walking... running... climbing... sneaking out the bedroom window and stealing the keys to the car to go to a kegger...) Anthony has decided to abandon the useful walking in favor of the ever-so-unuseful climbing.

So do I have relative peace because the little guy isn't up on his feet? Not exactly. (Neither does Javy, who realizes he has suddenly lost his vertical advantage...)

Anyway, it's not like I can just plop Anthony in the living room and ignore him while I do my daily thorough cleaning of the house (Of course I don't do that! I ignore him while I sit in the living room with him and watch American Idol reruns on bootleg DVDs!) and expect him to be safe. In the blink of an eye, he's on top of the sofa or coffee table or end table or worse...

The tried-and-true technique:

(The second video could have something to do with the fact that our camera is currently broken. Anthony 2, Digital Cameras 0. Grandma Char knows what I'm talking about.)

The ensuing hijinks:

Guess which one of the above led to a bump on the forehead...

Fortunately, he can get down by himself:

But still, on the danger scale, walking is to climbing as canoeing is to white water rafting. In one case, you might fall down, but you don't have that far to go and your landing is likely to be soft. In the other case, let's just go ahead and set the over/under on Anthony's first broken bone.

Still, I do realize the not walking thing (which I'm completely cool with and not obsessing over at all!) does have its advantages... kneeling and crawling on the furniture has to be safer than standing and running on the furniture, right?

I guess this means we have to keep him?

When we were in the hospital having Anthony, they gave all three of us matching wristbands so someone who wasn't Anthony's parent wouldn't be able to take him home....because newborns and their crying, non-sleeping ways are such a blast that people were surely lining up outside our hospital room door to take our place. (I have the same theory about why you aren't required to show ID for your baby when you take him on a plane. Who would even consider enduring a flight with a baby if that baby were not their own flesh and blood?)

Anyway, I somehow managed to lose my wristband, something that probably isn't surprising to anyone who knows us. Also not surprising to anyone who knows us, Brandon was just a touch irritated. He was convinced that without the matching mommy wristband, we would be forced to go home empty-handed, leaving the little guy to cool his heels in the hospital nursery for a week or two until everything was sorted out.

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that darn Brandon...

Joking! Actually, the nurse (the same one who had the dubious honor of trying to teach me to diaper and breastfeed a baby; yeah, I'm guessing this woman wanted us OUTTA THERE, FAST) issued me a new bracelet with little ado and sent us on our way.

The point of this fond memory? Thanks to some photos our parents recently found, it is pretty plain to see that no mistakes were made.

Anthony and his Dad ...

Anthony and his Mom (I'm on the right) ...

Clearly, this little person is ours.

Anthony is 13 months old today!

Now that Anthony is a toddler -- albeit in name only, as crawling remains his preferred...OK, only...means of transportation -- he misses no opportunity to show how grown up he is. (Except, of course, for the opportunity to GET UP AND WALK ALREADY FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE).

Mostly, he's really starting to communicate:

He sometimes addresses Brandon as "Dada" or "Dad," and will say "cat" when he sees Javier (provided I sit next to him, point at the cat and bellow "cat, cat, cat, cat" as Javy stalks off in a manner that implies I am sucking away his will to live any of his nine lives). Alas, I remain the only family member Anthony hasn't addressed by name, unless you count when he's on the verge of a tantrum and every whiny noise comes out "mum, mum, mum." Charming.

But, as is the case for many of Anthony's peers, apparently, his favorite means of communication is the cell phone.

Mine or Brandon's. Not the fake ones we try to fool and distract him with. He loves our phones, and if they're in his line of sight, watch out.



As if the above isn't irritating enough, Anthony is apparently one of those people who, instead of answering the phone with a polite "Hello?" just picks up and says, "Yeah." Since I'm pretty sure people who do that also obsessively check their stocks while having dinner with friends and speed to the very end of the merge lane on the highway, thereby making everyone else come to a screeching stop as they squeeze in, I will do my best to break him of this habit.



I'm also doing my best on that walking thing, which, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, really does not bother me (can't you tell?)

A friend suggested I try holding a cookie just out of Anthony's reach to see if the temptation prompts a few steps. So I crouched down, baked-from-scratch-with-love cookie (store-bought graham cracker) in hand, a few feet away from where Anthony was standing at the coffee table. He looked at the graham cracker and his eyes lit up. My heart soared with hope.

Anthony promptly dropped to his hands and knees, crawled to me as fast as he could, grabbed the cracker and hightailed it outta there. Maybe next time I'll just use my cell phone as the bait.

Anyway, if you wonder why we keep the little troublemaker around, here are some of his cute "1-year-old" pictures. If I do say so myself, awwwwwwww....

Steps in the Right Direction

Now that I can tell people Anthony recently turned 1 -- which I never hesitate to do, because everyone is sooo interested in my baby, right? -- the next natural question is, "Is he walking?"

Which he isn't.

When I reveal this, the person who asked usually backpedals desperately and acts like it's crazy talk to even suggest a 1-year-old might take a step or two and I should really be glad I'm not chasing him all over creation and they remember that their first cousin's coworker's massage therapist's baby didn't walk until he was 14 months...as if they don't want me to fret about Anthony ignoring the first part of the "walking at 1, talking at 2" mantra.

Which is funny, because it's probably the one thing in Anthony's whole life I haven't really felt that worried about (everyone walks eventually, I figure) until it became obvious that strangers think I should feel worried, so now I guess I will.

I would just lie and tell people he's 8 months old or something, in order to avoid the walking issue altogether. But that's not really an option, as everyone in Miami, for some reason, thinks my child is GARGANTUAN. Usually, when I tell someone Anthony is 1, they gasp, look at me aghast and stammer, "One? He's only 1? but he's so big -- oh my goodness, he's huge!" as if I've spawned some sort of Sumo wrestler rather than a normal little boy who began life on the small side of average and fell just shy of the "triple their weight in the first year" standard.

Anyway, on the bright side, Andre the Giant has finally started to show a little interest in getting on his feet.

He managed to stand on his own a few times by letting go of whatever he was holding onto, each time with a look of incredulity spreading over his face, like, "Am I really doing this?"

He even dared to take a few forward steps while pushing his music table (thanks Aunt Becky and Uncle Jeff!!)...

... and his favored method of crawling has switched from hands and knees to hands and feet...

...he looks kind of silly and I'm pretty sure all the other kids at daycare will make fun of him, not a good thing what with the Giantism already working against his chances of social acceptance, so I hope he just goes ahead and switches to walking soon.

In any case, he seems pretty happy these days:

Happy Father's Day!

Last year for Father’s Day, I gave Brandon, well, fatherhood. Anthony was born the day before Father’s Day. On the holiday itself, we brought him home.

So, I was kind of off the hook in terms of a Father’s Day gift last year.

Of course, it also means that while I got full Mother’s Day benefits for roughly 11 months of actual mothering, Brandon had to serve the entire 365 days (actually, more like 372, as Father’s Day is a week later this year than last) to cash in on his Father’s Day rewards.

Based on all that, I guess I should get him an actual present and not just try to sail through with this blog entry.

Just kidding, of course I got Brandon a present! I got him some nice knives because he likes to cook and a new pillow because our cat ripped up his pillow a few months back and poor Brandon has been sleeping on a folded up comforter ever since. And yes, I realize it’s just a touch creepy to give someone knives and a pillow for a gift. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and throw some rubber gloves, plastic tarp, duct tape and a jug of bleach in there as well.

Anyway, yes, of course Brandon gets a Father’s Day gift, because Brandon is a wonderful dad. And as I have a wonderful dad myself (my grandpa, my dad, me and Anthony)...

...I know a thing or two about wonderful dads. So trust me.

I say this even though Brandon has done his fair share of funny things over the past year.

Once he went to get groceries and tried to pick up Anthony's food for the week, and came back with something like a two-pack of pureed peas, a tiny jar of applesauce, several containers of Gerber “banana custard desert” and roughly 72 jars of meat. I was going to get all self-righteous and snotty about it, but then I thought to myself, “Given full freedom, this is probably how Brandon would feed HIMSELF...meat, meat, more meat, a little banana custard because, hey, a guy’s gotta get his fruit, meat, and then maybe some peas when guilt sets in.” So, I figured Brandon's choices for Anthony don’t mean he has no concept of what our child eats, they just mean he was trying to make the little fella happy, daddy-style.

Then there have been several times where I’ve come back from running important errands and volunteering at the soup kitchen (browsing through Macy's) to find Brandon SOUND ASLEEP AND SNORING while Anthony stands right next to him, red-faced and screaming. I always freak out at this point and yell, “What in the world are you doing???!!!???”

Not because I’m mad at Brandon...but I really want to know...so I can learn how to do that!

And I won’t even mention the time Brandon, upon arriving home from work, scooped up Anthony and lifted him in the air, not realizing he was standing under the “low” part of our ceiling and that lifting Anthony in the air would lead to bonking the little guy’s noggin. Yeah, I won't even mention that...ooops...

(Of course, what I really want to know is who exactly was snapping this photograph while her defenseless child...I mean that defenseless child...was being hoisted toward the rafters...)

Anyway, despite his funny ways, Brandon, as I said, is a great dad. Even though I know this to be true, I thought I’d go straight to the source just in case there are some doubters:

Anthony, who do you love very much?





I don't know if you've really answered my question. Let me put it a different way. Who is your favorite person in the world, right after your mommy, of course?

How interesting. Why don't you tell me how you feel when daddy has to leave to go to work?




I know, my interviewing skills are AMAZING. It's easy to see why I'm a professional journalist, right? Right? RIGHT???

1

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!"

Sappy Birthday to You...

I don't think of myself as a particularly sentimental person. A few silly things make me tear up -- Publix commercials, the hometown montages on American Idol, Brett Favre's retirement speech (but only the first one) -- but I don't have to remember to pack tissues when I go to a wedding and I haven't even seen Beaches or Steel Magnolias.

But lately, I feel like everything has been making me sniffle (NO, I'm not about to announce that I'm pregnant. If that were the case, I'd be sobbing, not sniffling...)

It's just that I'm feeling a bit...nostalgic...about Anthony turning 1. It happens Sunday, and while I'm very excited, I'm also getting a little emotional about it. He's not going to be my BABY anymore. He'll be a toddler, and then a little boy and then it's the first day of school and, just give me a minute while I go drop him off at his freshman dorm. And get a tissue.

Seriously, I'm excited about Anthony getting older. When we last visited home, we hung out with Anthony's cousins, Bradley, who is 3, and Matthew, who, at 7 months, still gets to be a baby for a while longer. The whole time, I kept thinking, I can't wait until Anthony is Bradley's age, at least if he's like Bradley, who is smart, well-behaved, funny and helpful.

And I'm still excited about all those things (yes, I mentally block out the fact that "all signs point to no," as the Magic 8 Ball might say, when it comes to Anthony being well-behaved), but as time marches forward and Anthony gets ready to smush his little fingers into his first birthday cake, I can't help but think back to the little baby we brought home from the hospital 51 weeks ago.

How did we go from this...

...to this?

The last year was the craziest, most fun, most chaotic and most emotional I've ever experienced. I'm not going to lie and say I loved every (sleepless) moment of it, but I get the feeling it will always be one of the best years of my life.

So, I guess I'm a sap, at least for now.

But before you make fun of me too much, go to YouTube and search for "Publix Valentine's Day commercial." You'll see what I mean. If you don't at least tear up, you may not have a soul...