Flashback Friday: Falling for a Boy

We are entering birthday week in the King House.  Brace yourself for some sappiness ahead. 

I remember last fall walking Atticus and admiring the trees in our neighborhood.  The leaves were starting to fall and our street was full of amazing color.  I was very pregnant and very emotional.  I was trying to take it all in and I remember getting particularly sentimental.  I couldn't help but think that every year, when the leaves start to change, we'll think of Bennett and his birthday. 

Sure enough, oranges, golds and some reds started popping up in our new neighborhood.  The Tennessee hills are full of color.  I'm brought back to those walks last fall when my life was entirely different.  I was a big city girl.  I had a tight knit group of friends.  I was a wife, not a mom.  I was afraid of the breastfeeding challenges and millions of things that could go wrong with the birth and his health and the sleepless nights ahead.   

Thinking of the lifetime of fall seasons ahead we'll remember those days before he was born and our eager anticipation and our nerves.  And we'll remember how exciting his first birthday was and how much we are looking forward to his upcoming festivities.  Those leaves will forever be a part of his birthday memory past and future.  This is just the beginning.

And on the 356th Day

He said mom.

Walk This Wednesday

We have spent weeks and months crouching over to help the boy walk.  Our backs are sore and his arms are about to pop out of their sockets.  Then, tonight, he let go.  He walked to my sister.  I wasn't looking.  I missed his first step.  But I was there for the second, third and fourth steps.

Had I known that this would be THE photo opportunity, I wouldn't have put him in such prissy pants.  Good thing you can't see the teddy bear on his dupa.  And yes, those are size nine month pants.

And this is why Steve Jobs invented iPhones.

Proud momma and yay Bennett!

Today his report card from daycare said they practiced walking.  Now, I'm wondering if that isn't the daycare teacher's way of acknowledging he took his first steps.  She was being nice, wasn't she?  Nah, we totally caught his second step on camera!

Flashback Friday: Pass Day Part Deux

Pass Day 2007 was a triumph.  Rocky's posse of attorney pals all passed on their first try.  We went to happy hour that evening to celebrate and stayed out way past my bedtime.  Take two was a little less splashy.  Instead of cocktails and champagne there were sippy cups and high chairs.

They were all new to their jobs and money was burning a hole in their pocket.  After three years of student loans and the socratic method, they were ready to celebrate their entrance to the bar with copious amounts of adult beverages and copious amounts of lawyer jokes.

Last Friday we celebrated Pass Day Part Deux with dinner at 5 and an array of baby purees.  The restaurant was swarming with bibs and strollers with nary a nixed drink in sight.  So, it was a little more laid back, a little more intimate, but I'm just as proud and grateful and delighted as before.  I must be, because I never seem to face the camera on pass day.

Gnashville

Yesterday, we stood in line for an hour so my sister could flirt with some professional hockey players.  She's one part celebrity stalker, one part on the prowl for a sugar daddy, one part of a chicken to go alone.  Cue the greatest ice breaker of all time.  Sadly, Bennett got a few autographs and promptly stuck them in his mouth.  I wonder how much a slobbery, teeth torn piece of scrap paper will fetch on the internet?  We do need to start the boys college fund at some point.  I suppose that would be unnecessary if the sugar uncle enters the picture sometime in the next seventeen years.

Flashback Friday: Vino

When we lived in Virginia, visiting the vineyards on one of our favorite past times.  We would get a big group together, pack a lunch and drive to Loudon County and spend an afternoon tasting wines and pretending it didn't all taste like dirt.  One year, our resident social chair planned a fabulous thirtieth birthday fete with a limo and lunch and we hardly recognized that we were drinking swill.  Folks, Virginia Viognier is no California Chardonnay.

We were sad to leave the Virginia Wine Trail behind. Despite sips of downright smoky whites and tipsy acquaintances congratulating me for my "child bearing hips," it was a lovely way to spend the day. After giving our out of town wedding guests a bottle of fine Tennessee wine as a welcome gift, I know that Tennessee can't compete even compete with Virginia Vintners.

Or so I thought. In an effort to show Rocky the Real Nashville, we visited Kix Brook's winery, Arrington. My mom took Bennett for the afternoon so Rocky and I could take an afternoon drive and enjoy some fine wine in a plastic cup and a $10 block of cheese. The scenery is just as good, if not better. Shockingly, the wine was just as good, if not better. That my friends is because Kix and his friends know that try as they might, grapes should be grown in California. It may be a Tennessee vineyard, but that is one fine California wine!

Going to the Big D and I Don't Mean Dallas

So, Rocky starts his new job Monday.  Hurray and Huzzah and Hot Diggity!  He accepted an offer and then asked if he could start in two days.  That posed a minor problem.  You see, I don't believe babies are welcome at law firms, even cherubic, sweet-smelling, non-crawling types.

We were so lucky to find a great nanny in Virginia.  She was a mother of four children and had watched our neighbors kids for years.  Bennett blossomed in her care.  He had been a crazy fussy newborn and within just a few weeks became an easy-going social baby.  When we told her we were moving, she cried.  I cried.  I knew how difficult it would be to replace her.

Child care in Nashville is an entirely different ball game.  Your choices are basically in-home day care with four to six other kids and the babysitter is paid peanuts or a nanny with a price tag equivalent to in-state tuition.  Anytime I inquired about nanny shares with other mothers or even nanny placement companies they looked at me like I had two heads.

I really didn't want to send Bennett to a daycare center.  When I had toured the centers in DC, they smelled of bleach and poopy diapers.  Babies were lined up in bouncers and fed in an assembly line.  The older children went for walks on a leash through the busy downtown streets for playtime.

Thankfully, day care centers are a different ball game too.  We took a tour on Tuesday.  It didn't smell like bleach or dirty diapers.  Bennett sat down with one of the teachers and read books, studied the older kids intently and enjoyed the new toys.  When we slipped out to finish our tour, he was too happy and distracted to care.

But Bennett's been home with his dad for the past two months.  He's gone to the park and field trips to Target and long walks in our new neighborhood.  He napped in his own bed and his dad was there for him when he woke up.  He had one on one attention for months and soon he'll be surrounded by big kids and babies and there will be a new face rubbing his back when he wakes up crying.  He'll be put down when another kid cries.  He'll get colds and stomach viruses.

Those same anxious feelings I had when we started going to the nanny's are back.  Now, he's bigger and stronger.  But when I pick him up, he still can't tell me he bumped his head or another little boy was mean.  I just have to go with my gut that this is the right thing to do.