i have learned how to climb and let me tell you that it is a lot of fun because then i can throw my climbing foot up on the footstool and then follow that climbing foot and from there the couch and eventually the world.

this is nice which is good since otherwise my days have been not so good. i know i do not need naps but dang i get really tired when i do not nap like i have not been doing the last few days.

my balloons from my birthday party are all dying so mamamama and dadadada cut them down and then for a little while they talked really funny.

yesterday i got to get the shots the doctor didn’t give me the other day because i was all sick and stuff last week. i got like three shots, two in one leg and one in the other, and they hurt but i am not a little baby any more i am one so i decided not to cry much. i mean i did right after i got the shot because that is all ow and all but right after i stopped. it did not hurt nearly as much as it did last week when they poked my finger and squeezed it to get all of my blood out.

then i went home and had some juice.

also i may have been too strong in my last entry, milk is pretty good to drink when you are thirsty too. but juice is better.

yesterday i was all thirsty and i tried to tell mamamama this but she kept trying to give me water or milk and i was all what is this.7 when you are thirsty you do not want water or milk you want juice.

It’s actually a little past your first birthday, but it’s been a busy time here lately. Your birthday party was a lot of fun, with some twenty-five people in attendence. Four of them were even close to your age. Your grandparents visited over three weekends. You were surrounded by fans.

I’m amazed by all that’s happened in this last year. Let’s face it, when you were first born, you were mainly a device for turning milk into dirty diapers. Now you walk around, grabbing everything you can reach and can chew on. You have a personality and opinions—do you ever have opinions. The other day I held up two jars of baby food, one of fruit and the other of vegetables. You pointed to the fruit and pushed the vegetables away. I was so proud that you were coming into your own.

Then I was annoyed that you wouldn’t eat the vegetables.

Movement is a big thing for you. You were so annoyed that you couldn’t move under your own steam, especially when all the other babies in playgroup were zipping around you. As soon as you could sit up, you started doing butt circles, turning all the way around by pushing with your feet. You eventually started army crawling, then moved on to more traditional crawling. By eleven months you were tottering around on two feet, your fists clenched tight.

Nowadays you have a lot of fun when I pick you up and zoom you around, or toss you into the air, or flip you backwards and land you on your feet. Some day I will do this over and over and over and then you will throw up on me.

You’re the most social baby I’ve seen. Sometimes you are all grumpy and angry sitting around at home. The solution? Put you in the car and go somewhere where there are people! Parties are the best: an opportunity to be surrounded by fans? Sign you up!

There are numerous cute and strange things you do. You’re a tactile kid, and love nothing more than to be held. We’ll put you down in a restaurant and you’ll go to strangers, holding up your arms to them. Don’t you know that strangers are evil, and carry evil candy?

You do this thing with most any fabric where you fall upon it and hug it tight. Pillows, freshly-laundered towels, my sweaty racquetball clothes, it doesn’t matter. You see it, head for it, and flop face-first onto it. Then you roll around on it, feeling it against your skin. The best things are socks, since they’re small enough that you can lie on them, then stand up and carry them somewhere else to lie on them again.

It’s been two weeks of firsts. Your first birthday. Your first fever, which left you listless and wanting to be held. Your first bout of stomach flu, including some truly spectacular projectile vomiting. You would get this look on your face, as if to say, “Huh, that feels strange,” and then FWOOOM onto me, your mom, the carpet. We’ll be renting a carpet cleaner soon. Just so you know, its cost is coming out of your future allowance.

You’ve picked up a few words. Misty and I were surprised the day you picked up your sippy cup, slammed it on your high chair tray like a tiny Krushchev, and declared, “Cup.” Then you stopped saying the word for a while, just to torment us. You can also say “sock” (or its less-accepted variant, “dock,” assuming you’re not really referring to docks) and “duck,” for the little stuffed duck you carry around in your mouth, letting it dangle sadly from one wing. Other than that, double-tongued phrases are popular, leading to conversations like the following:

Me: Would you like a drink?

You: Leedleleedleleedleleedle leedle leedleloodleloodleladle ladleladleladle.

Me: Okay, I’m getting your cup.

You: Ladleladleladle ladleladle leedleleedleleedle LEEDLELEEDLELEEDLE!

Your communication skills are better all around. You can point at something that you want and reach for it, occasionally emphasizing this want with a grunt. You also point at things you want to see. You also point at things you should not have but really want to chew on anyway, like plants and power cords and doorknobs.

It turns out you like books. Thank goodness, since someone’s going to have to inherit the library your mom and I are amassing. We’ve had to switch to the Library of Congress catalog system just to keep track, it’s so big. Anyway, you love to get books and open them, staring at the words and pictures. Granted, you have a preference for looking at them upside down, but I’ll take a kid who likes books upside down to one who doesn’t like books at all.

Fatherhood isn’t exactly what I’d imagined. Really, I don’t know what I imagined, except that it involved me imparting the wisdom of the ages to you. So far I’ve taught you how to pretend to bite someone’s nose. You lean forward, mouth open, slowly headed for the target nose, while cutting your eyes to one side as if to say, “Don’t mind me, I’m not doing anything, and I’m certainly not trying to eat your nose.” Then you put your mouth gently on the person’s nose before letting go.

We’re going to have to break you of that, by the way. It’s really cute until you do it to some kid who decides to bite back. My one bit of teaching, so to speak, and I have to un-teach it.

Being a father hasn’t been all roses and fine chocolates. It’s also been sleepless nights, tearful decisions, annoyance at our inability to communicate. People say it’s hard, but they can’t tell you how hard, and how often you’ll look like a complete idiot. Ask me some time about one of the first times I changed your diaper while your mom and Mumsy were sleeping. Dear lord, the mess.

Parenting is the hardest thing I’ve done yet, and it’s a crapshoot whether I’m doing it right or not. Your mom and I are guessing at what to do, and sometimes the decisions we have to make are terrible. I’ve learned that crying will not kill you, even though it may kill me. I’ve learned to spend time with you, letting you play, joining in when you’ll let me. Really, for all my grand ideas of teaching, you’re the one teaching me.

It’s more than worth it. The joy of watching you become a person, with likes and dislikes, moods and thoughts, is overwhelming. You have already exceeded my wildest expectations about what you’d be like. And the look on your face when I come home from work, standing up, squealing “dadadada!” and tottering towards me, it breaks my heart. I will treasure the memories of these days, holding them warm to me when you’re fifteen and only communicating in brief grunts of “whatever” and “as if,” or whatever goofy slang you kids will come up with.

As I write this, I’m in the Atlanta airport on a trip. I don’t like traveling like this, leaving you and your mom behind. I’m thankful I don’t have to travel that much, and it only serves to make me enjoy the time with you more. The airport is filled with muzak to lull us and keep us docile. Imagine my surprise to hear “Ordinary World” played, a song I haven’t heard in about a year.

I didn’t cry, but it was a close thing. I guess a year of being a father hasn’t repaired my critical tastes yet.

so it is not all bad being sick i had fans asking after me and that was nice, and all yesterday nanny came by, her real name is ashley but she is like a nanny and it was cool. i was so happy that i did not throw up on her, not once. besides, dadadada did not get sick so maybe half of my genetic stock is okay when it comes to getting sick.

i was so disgusted with the situation that i forgot to say that i went to the doctor today for my one year checkup and he was all ‘your head size is good’ and ‘your length is great’ and ‘look at you walking around aren’t you cute’ and then he sends in one of his goons in a nemo shirt and has my finger stuck./ and she kept squeezing and squeezing to get more blood out for whatever she was going to do and that hurt a lot.

today has not been fun.

dadadada won’t let me have more than like a sip of water or baby gatorade at a time. and just because i threw up like four times last night.

okay, five.

maybe six. but that last time was tiny.

and to make it worse now mamamama has it too and is all mopey and sick and blah. so not only are my parents stupid they are of weak genetic stock and i will probably die when i am like three.

i came home from school this afternoon and i was all wondering if we were going to wash the cars again because that was so fun but we did not, i guess it is one of those things that you only do every once in a while because it is so much fun.

but late this afternoon i started feeling really bad and then urp i threw up and it projected forward which was kind of cool but not cool enough to be worth the bad feeling. i threw up a couple of more times and let me tell you i was tired of the bath. i think i am going to try to sleep now to see if i feel better when i get up.

we just got in from washing the cars and that was a lot of fun, i had never seen that happen before. it was all whoosh with water being sprayed and a bucket of foam that i got to splash in and i picked up one of the washing brushes but it was very big, bigger than me and i could not weild it i would have been at like -2 to my thac0. although now i don’t think they have thac0 any more and that is sad.

the mulch was tasty too.