Connor, one year ago, circa 9 PM, roughly two hours old (you’ve seen the hand before):

Tonight, at his birthday party:

Saying much more would probably turn me into a blubbery mess, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Oh, except: for his first birthday, I’ve set up an e-mail address of his very own. It’s his-first-name ‘at’ his-last-name dot-com (I’d rather not type the actual address in plain text so as to cut down on the mail he receives from Nigerian money launderers, discount pharmaceutical firms, and other, less appropriate correspondents). I plan to formally give it to him at some as-yet undetermined point in the future (how old is old enough for an e-mail address?), at which point I think it’d be cool to have lots of messages from all sorts of people. Keep in mind that you’re probably writing for a 4 or 5-year-old, so keep it relatively simple and short. I’ll of course be checking the inbox from time to time to prune spam and get rid of creepy messages from strangers and retouching those messages insufficiently enthusiastic about the virtues of listening to ones’ parents, but otherwise: have at.

So he’s crawling, right? So we can’t just put him down and expect him to be there when we get back. That won’t fly any more. So it’s fun, but it’s an adjustment.

And I thought I was doing so well. I had to go to the bathroom the other day (it happens), so I put him in his crib where he’d be safe.

I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later to this:

He could easily have leaned forward and fallen right on out of the crib. He didn’t look like he was going to, so I turned on the mobile and took the above video, but a few seconds later he lost his balance and bonked his head on the railing and fell down crying. (We’re very used to this routine by now.)

I moved the matress to its lowest setting later that day.

(And yes, that’s a Red Wings onesie he’s wearing – go Wings!)

I make it a point not to talk about politics in this space.  As those who know me know, I’m a bit of a political junkie (at least for this election; to give you some idea, I spent much of the day watching the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee meeting, and actually found it interesting viewing).  That has no place on this site.  But I couldn’t resist posting what I just overheard Shannon saying to Connor in the next room:

“Honey, when you run for President, you should not bring up assassination. It is not appropriate.”

The other night, Connor fell and bumped his head.  In point of fact, this has happened more or less every day since he started crawling and pulling up on things.  He’ll fall, there’ll be a moderate thud, a second or two of silence, then a loud wail as the shock fades.  Then one of us will snatch him up and hug him and his cries will quickly turn to moans, as if he’s only still crying because he’s been crying, but he can’t quite remember why.

So anyway, the other night, he took a particularly nasty fall and got a small bump on his head.  I was making Cookies & Creme frozen yogurt with our new ice cream maker (verdict: homemade frozen yogurt tastes too much like yogurt), so I did what my mom would’ve done and stuck an Oreo in his mouth.

Now Connor’s kind of weird with finger food.  He’s one of the few kids I’ve ever seen who doesn’t stick everything in his mouth.  He doesn’t put much of anything in his mouth, including Cheerios and baby wafer stars.  If you stick something in his mouth, he’ll eat it, but he won’t feed himself yet.

But when I handed him the Oreo… well, see for yourself:

(The drone in the background is the ice cream maker; the music you may hear in the background is Vegetable Town from Snack Time).

Actually, the only questionable thing about this album is that it’s by the Barenaked Ladies, and any time you say that you’re guaranteed to hear titters of laughter from the preadolescents the back seat (just like when you say, “titters,” or “annals,” come to think of it; and here I thought this was a family blog).

The songs are hilarious, and great for kids and adults alike.  Seriously.  It kicks of with 789, about how everybody’s scared of 7 because, you guessed it, 789.  There’s Eraser, an ode to the timeless de-writing implement that starts out as a clever little ’50s doo-wop number and then veers into Bohemian Rhapsody territory.  There’s the Crazy ABCs, in which your child will learn that A is for aisle, D is for djinn, H is for Hour, J is for jalapeños, and around 22 others.

Connor seems to think it’s fun to listen to, and so do we.  Thoroughly worth a listen.

(huh huh.  I said “titter.”)

But he’s apparently not so fond of the papa-ratzi.

He’s just started doing this in the past few days.  Funny story: Shannon was spending time with him on our bed last Thursday morning (as we often do, as he hasn’t been mobile) and, for his first try at forward motion, he crawled himself right off the bed, hit the floor screaming, and then lost his breakfast, prompting Shannon to take him to the ER to get him checked  out.  Okay, so maybe not so funny, but he’s fine, so it all works out.

It’s been a crazy weekend.  Shannon’s been in Dayton for her grandmother’s birthday; I was in Rhode Island at my cousin Tamara’s wedding (bonus points if you can pick Tamara out of the lineup without reading the descriptions – this is my site, and you will be graded) (lovely wedding, incidentally).  So until a few hours ago I hadn’t seen him since late Friday afternoon.  And he sure wasn’t crawling like this then.  He’s gone from awkwardly shuffling backwards to impressive forward progress in about three days.

For those who might be interested, Shannon will be doing the March for Babies (a.k.a. the March of Dimes) this coming Saturday.  You can sponsor her, if you like, here.  It’s a great cause that helps lots of babies who aren’t as lucky as Connor was.

Sometime in the past two or three days, Connor started doing this. Sitting up on his own. He needs a little help getting into position, but once he’s there, he’ll stick for a good while.As for the piano playing, well… see for yourself:

For those who may not know, Connor had very minor surgery this morning. Everything went perfectly, and we’re home now and recuperating. He’s mostly normal, but a little groggy. Not sleepy, just a bit off.

Did you know that your tear ducts drain into your nose? Or, at least, they’re supposed to. With Connor, and about 5% of other babies, not so much. The result is very gooey eyes that sometimes crust shut. The avenue for this drainage starts out as a string of cells that eventually grow into a tube, but sometimes it doesn’t pop all the way. Most of the time this clears up on its own in the first six months, but sometimes it needs a little help. They take a probe and stick it through the passage, opening up any blockages. Here’s some information on the procedure. For those of you who know my friend Jonathan, his son had the same procedure about a year ago.

Connor’s surgery was scheduled for 7:30 this morning, which meant that he couldn’t eat anything after 3:30 a.m. So we spent the night getting up every three hours to get some food in him up until 3:00. You know, like we used to do. For three months. How soon we forget. I have no idea how we survived.Then we got up at 5 so we could get to the hospital by 6:30. Connor, fortunately, slept through most of it. Then we got there, talked to an army of nurses, anesthesiologists, residents, assistants, and various and sundry other medical types, and then off he went, calm as could be. They sent us to a waiting room. It was a small waiting room. We were the only people there. Seemed strange. We figured this was the waiting room for people having short, easy, low-risk procedures; no need to expose us to the parents frantically suffering from the major heebies. They told us they’d be by in about a half hour to tell us how it went.

Over an hour later, we were wondering if this was the waiting room where they put the parents of the children they planned to sell on the black market; they didn’t want to tell us about it in front of other people. Finally somebody we recognized brought in another patient; we looked up eagerly to watch her turn and leave again without a word. About two minutes later she came back, looked at us apologetically, and said that everything went perfectly, no problems whatever, and we’ll bring you to him in a minute. So we relaxed again.

Finally somebody took us to talk to the surgeon, Dr. Del Monte (Dr. Monte Del Monte; yes, really) who told us, again, that everything went well; that things were indeed quite tight, but they’d run some fluid through and it came out clear. This procedure has about a 90% success rate, so he should be okay (if we have to go back, they stick a small silicone tube in there for about a year to hold it open; thanks, but we’d rather not).

So he’s fine. Still a bit groggy, and I think his throat is sore from the ventilator (they controlled his breathing while he was under), but he’s back to his leg pumping ways.He and his mom are napping now. Not a bad idea.