Wrestling The Octopus

What a strange, crazy, fun, long, short, fast, tiring, amazing year it has been.

Malcolm is turning one today. It feels like barely yesterday when we were calling the nurse in to show us how to change a diaper properly after opening it up and discovering this black, tar-like substance...or I could hold Malcolm completely resting on my forearm...or he couldn't even roll over on his own...

Now he walks (like a drunken sailor most of the time), he talks (pretty much the same way, but with even less understanding) and he gets into everything (especially the cabinets we've been too lazy to figure out what to do with...we've labelled these "The Forbidden Cabinets of Doom" and usually just scoot him away with a terse "No" that rarely works).

He's proud of the one word he knows and can say with confidence, even when he's somewhat wrong. The word is fan and he knows it's the thing on the ceiling that creates wind...but you can also blow in his face to get him to say the word or show him the lights and he'll also say it (we're working hard on explaining the difference).

Its also amazing watching his reactions to both new and old foods. He hates broccoli. When he was smaller and still being spoon fed, we'd give it to him mashed up and he ate it no problem. Now we give him a floret and it immediately becomes part of the floor. We've even tried wrapping it in turkey. He just unwraps it, shoves the turkey in his mouth and tosses the offending green on the floor.

It seems like just yesterday he and I would wake up early Saturday mornings (well...he'd wake me up early) and we'd go down and watch the previous night's Battlestar Galactica while mommy slept late after a long night of feedings. Now, he has pretty much nothing to do with "adult" TV. If we're watching something and he's in the room, he'll pretty much ignore the TV and play by himself. He does like his TV shows, however.

It kind of amazes me how children's TV programming has changed since I was a kid watching the first episode of Sesame Street all those years ago. Even that show has changed. It's become a bit more regimented as you know the show's format doesn't really change from day to day (Elmo's World is always on 45 minutes in). And while I may get sick of seeing the same segments over and over (I'm constantly having to remove the Journey To Ernie theme from my head on a daily basis...that is if I'm not singing it to calm Mac during a crying session), I do learn new things on occassion (did you know that Cookie Monster's real name may have been Sid...he mentioned it in a song about the time when he was a baby before he ever ate Cookies).

Other shows he enjoys are Between The Lions (a great show about reading), Go Baby (an innocuous and short show about a baby that's rather appropriate for Mac's age), Little Einsteins (a weird Disney Channel show that is rather enjoyable), Higgleytown Heroes (a weird show I don't get at all...what's with the squirrel on the kid's head all the time) and The Wiggles (who seem to dress as if they're the official band of Starfleet...I keep expecting the guy in the red shirt to be vaporized by a rock monster any minute).


We are doing our best to keep his TV viewing to a minimum (heck...we don't really need another me in the house), but sometimes when you're exhausted from being awake earlier than you want, or having to chase him away from Forbidden Cabinets of Doom, or from trying to change the poopiest diaper EVER while all he wants to do is flip over and stand up and toss clothes on the floor (or put his hands in the diaper as you're trying to reomve it), the TV becomes an easy crutch to keep him occupied...of course knowing this is half the battle of controlling it better.

Anyway...it's been an amazing and wonderful and exhausting year. Sometimes I miss my "old" life (where we could easily go see friends in shows or go to see whatever movie we wanted whenever we wanted), but I wouldn't want it back if I had to trade him in to get it. Being a parent is awesome...even though at this stage you've got to wrestle an octopus just to get a clean diaper on him (or to give him his first haircut...which was off because once his hair was short we thought Malcolm had been switched with another baby he looked so different....of course as soon as he started babbling about that non-existant fan on the ceiling we knew he was still ours).

If you want to see how Malcolm's grown over the last year check out:

http://www.seemegrow.net/gallery/fenster

You can even see how tired we are at times...but we're happy.

How could we not be?

Next....Superman Returns...

Be seeing you.