Almost a full two months after the fact, there are finally pictures from Liam’s birthday weekend up:
Liam’s First Birthday Weekend Extravaganza!
You may notice the page looks a little different from the earlier photo albums. Someday I’ll get around to recoding the old ones to match the new design and the new site. You know, in all that spare time I have.
We had a fun afternoon with my parents yesterday. Again, it was a bit hard to get into the rhythm of the day; one wants to relax yet one’s brain is also saying, “But they’re leaving in a couple of hours, we should be doing things!”
Liam’s always doing things, though, as illustrated by these photos taken by my father:
So we finally had that smallish birthday thing on Saturday afternoon, organised by Tal and co-hosted by him and Prospero’s Daughter. It was pleasant, but it ended up exactly as I had been trying to avoid in my own planning: I spent most of my time keeping an eye on Liam, so I never really got to relax or actually talk to people. I really appreciated it when a couple of people made a point of coming over to sit or stand next to me for a few minutes to share some time with me now and again, because I was feeling remarkably isolated. It was the trade-off I couldn’t avoid: if the people I wanted there were in attendance, then there was no one to watch Liam elsewhere. Everyone else seemed to be having a really good time, though, so I’m happy for that. The cake was awesome, and I deliberately took the corner bit so that I got extra icing and a huge buttercream rose on top. Although pretty much as soon as I finished that we had to flee because Liam was cranky and tired, which rushed the present-giving and subsequent thank yous, making me vaguely irritated and feeling like I’d never really had the opportunity to enjoy my own party, let alone have a second piece of cake.
And speaking of presents, I was caught completely by surprise by the group gift being a cheque to finally allow me to purchase the CD player for the car that I’ve been trying to get around to buying for two years now. We went out yesterday to research and price them, and if I add the gift certificate that was the birthday present from my in-laws, it will pretty much cover the cost of the unit we’ve chosen, the parts needed to fit it into the car, and the extended warranty. The vague plan is to go back to the store today before I pick up Liam to purchase it and make the appointment for installation later this week, which happens to be free as part of a current promotion. Thanks, everyone!
Notwithstanding the lack of a second piece of cake, I did have a cup of excellent beer given to me (liquid barley sugar that carried a 14% alcoholic kick!), and a cup of the now infamous Baronial sangria. I had to make myself hot dogs at home after Liam went to bed, though, because I’d only managed six bites of a brochette at the party what with making Liam’s dinner and feeding half a brochette to him, and dropping another half on the ground while sitting on the edge of the deck trying to feed myself and watch Liam eating at the same time.
Another excellent birthday gift was the first season of Slings & Arrows, given to me by Elim, the second and final disk of which we enjoyed after we got home.
All in all, I’ve liked that my birthday celebrations began the weekend before my birthday, and have sort of quietly been carrying on for the past three weeks, what with people handing me little gifts or treats or doing nice things for me here and there. Next year, though, if we do the party thing at all I’m putting my foot down and scheduling it when my in-laws are in town, even if that means August, because I want to be able to fully enjoy my own birthday extravagana.
While we were over visiting his godparents yesterday, Liam found a copy of a recent movie magazine with a picture of Brandon Routh on the cover. His godmother held it up for him.
“Look, Liam!” she said. “It’s Superman! See: blue, and red, and yellow, and a big S.”
Liam looked at the picture seriously for a moment before pointing at it, breaking into a delighted smile, and saying, “Dada!”
Yeah, I think your Da’s pretty awesome too, kid. More along the Mr. Incredible line than Superman, but hey, you’ve demonstrated a decent understanding of the kind of guy he is. And that’s also awesome.
Today he cut not one but both upper one-year molars.
No wonder it’s been so painful for everyone around here over the past ten days. And today was a special sort of insane. I discovered the first one in the top right gum around lunch. Then jteethy came to pick us up in order to whisk us over to share the afternoon with him and Paze (thank you thank you thank you for the change in scenery and company!), and I discovered the second one on the other side. It literally came through an hour later.
Brave little guy. There have been lots of tears and hugs today, in amongst the screaming and blissful unconsciousness imposed upon him by the car as we took a long, long drive along the Lakeshore. Lots of growing accomplished.
The other big news of the day: We set up the car seat to face forward. He’s definitely a big boy, what with molars and sitting so that he can look in the direction we’re headed like the adults do, and eating Popsicles like he did on Sunday (very fun, even though he kept trying to hold the cold ice part instead of the stick and dropping it because it was, well, cold) and grilled cheese sandwiches too (first one yesterday — it’s cheese! and toast! awesome!).
This is already a bad, bad day.
It started yesterday afternoon with me feeling ill. This morning, still ill, I’m running into scheduling problems as well. As a result I have zero patience and am very close to throwing all my scheduled activities into other people’s faces and telling them to handle everything, because I’m really tired of being the one who co-ordinates.
It doesn’t help that the only thing I got done on my list of things to do yesterday afternoon was the cello. I worked for almost two hours straight on three different songs, which is a good thing because I wanted to finalise a couple of bits I’d been developing and some of it sounds beautiful, but not so good in that it’s the only thing I ended up doing. Also in that a disproportionate amount of time was spent trying to fix something that seemed broken, thanks to a tabber’s idiocy in not correctly identifying the source of the tab I was using as a basis for constructing a bassline.
On the good side of things, however, Liam had another awesome day at daycare yesterday. This time he got to play with two other children, a boy only a couple of months older than he is and a girl of four and a half. This was very okay in his books, as he likes to watch older children playing. He’s going to get more of it today, because we’re headed over to the ADZO homestead so that HRH can indulge in some well-earned playtime with the guys, and thus Liam and I get to play with other mummies and babies. And he’ll get a bit of it tomorrow before he goes to bed as well, because there are children coming to the neighbours’ housewarming.
Thank you everyone for your expressions of support and sympathy for the tree massacre. We’ll be planting the crabapple this fall, and in the meantime we’ll be putting up eight-foot strips of lattice and planting fast-growing vines to screen our yard from the one behind us, and to provide some sort of shade so that Liam and I can play in the yard again. If the lilacs don’t die, they’ll take about four years to come back properly, and provide privacy and shade.
Liam is off at daycare again today. He woke up four times last night after we got home around 11.30, one time enough to need to be picked up and cuddled back to sleep. Oddly enough, the loud electrical storm we had didn’t seem to bother him when things were crashing and flashing right above the house for a good half hour. But he woke up roughly every couple of hours, which meant that we did too, to lie in bed and wait to see if he’d wake up completely or just half-awaken and cry a bit before self-soothing back to sleep. As a result we didn’t sleep that well, either. Good thing we had an excellent evening out relaxing beforehand.
We think his molars are coming in, because the random biting has started up again and he sticks anything and everything into the back of mouth to gnaw. That might be one of the reasons he woke up so often, too.
I ran around and did errands this morning after dropping Liam off, and one of them involved going to the Chapters on the West Island to kick around for an hour until the shop I needed to visit in Fairview mall opened at 10:00. (And the only thing I’m going to say about the second shop is that I seem to have reached a pants size that’s smaller than I wore before I was pregnant. Smaller than I’ve ever worn, actually. I’m not sure how that happened.) And while I was in the bookstore, I did something that absolutely terrified me: I asked a clerk about their policy on authors signing shelf stock.
I am incredibly shy. To admit in person, in real-life public, that I wrote not only one book but three is a huge thing. A huge, terrifying thing. I have been in dozens and dozens of shops that carry my books, and I just kind of see them there on the shelf, then smile a bit and look away quickly, because heaven forbid anyone sees me and somehow intuits that those books were written by me, because then people will make a fuss and look at me, and I will melt from confusion and embarrassment. Not because I’m ashamed of my books, you understand. I’m very proud of them. Just not in a loud “look what I did!” sort of way. (Journal completely aside, of course. Writing about it is different. And even here I tend to worry about the flaws and the challenges more than anything else.) This is the main reason why I still haven’t done an event or a signing.
I managed to not ask this question of the five friendly staff members who paused to wish me a good day and ask if I needed any help while I wandered around. There was just something so calm and kind about Jessica (nametags are so helpful) when she was scanning the books I was purchasing, so I asked her. And she said that often they had authors in for events, or they dropped off consignment copies, and was I looking for a signed copy of something in particular? And then I had to say that no, I was, um, an author, and they had three copies of my books on the shelf, and did they want them signed? She said then that she was pretty sure the store would love me to sign them, took my name, and called the manager to verify. The manager was indeed thrilled, and said yes yes yes, and so off I went to fetch the two copies of Solitary Wicca and the single copy of Spellcraft (no Green Witch, alas), and I signed them.
The Indigo chain puts stickers that indicate signed books on autographed copies.
So there; that was today’s terribly big adventure. Hurrah to Jessica. I hope she has an excellent day.
Now I have fourish hours in which to work on Swan Sister, do a draft outline of a table of contents for a book I proposed in case someone asks me for it, and practice the cello for a bit in prep for this weekend’s rehearsal.