Posts Tagged ‘babies’

Last week my friend, Catherine, had a little baby girl.  They named her Nora and she was beautiful.  She didn’t come out all squished up like a lot of newborns.  She was pretty and smooth and she looked like she’d been born a thousand times before.  Like she was an old pro.

When I saw a picture of her, my ovaries instantly started chanting, “WE WANT A GIRL!  WE WANT A GIRL!”  And then Bean threw my keys in the toilet bowl (true story) and my ovaries paused for just a moment before chanting instead, “MAYBE WE CAN WAIT!  MAYBE WE CAN WAIT!”  And later that day as I paid bills and did our depressing banking, my ovaries paused one more time before chanting, “NEVERMIND, LET’S BUY A FISH!  NEVERMIND, LET’S BUY A FISH!”

Occasionally, my ovaries chant.  They’ve done it before.  They’ll do it again.  My ovaries are chanters.  They demand things from me from time to time – usually more babies.  And when they’re being particular, they demand babies of the female variety.  Usually this happens when I find that I have accidentally wandered into the girl section of Carter’s or Target and frilly dresses and underpants with ruffles have somehow managed to jump spontaneously into my cart.  For some reason this triggers my ovaries.  I can’t imagine why.

But, inevitably, one of two things happen to silence my chanting ovaries.  Either Bean does something that makes me sigh and say, “No, Bean!”  For example, yesterday I looked over to find Bean feeding Big Molly all of his blocks.  Molly had eaten four wooden blocks by the time I got over there.  Or like yesterday evening when Chris and I were sitting down to eat dinner and Bean poured Chris’ drink all over the table – including all over our food.  Yeah, those are the times when you sigh, “redirect the child’s attention” (according to the books), and think to yourself, “There’s no way I could handle two of him.”

If that doesn’t silence the ovaries, then they chant until Bean does something so incredibly funny or sweet or cute.  Like yesterday morning when he learned to blow kisses.  Or when he fell out of his school bus toy and Chris picked him up, but Bean held his arms out and cried for me.  Those times when your heart melts and you realize that being Bean’s mom is the best thing in the whole world.  My ovaries stop chanting then because I think that there would just be no way I could ever love another baby as much as I love him.  And they stop when I realize how much fun it is to be a mom to a baby boy. I love having a boy.  He’s into everything, always on the go, rough, ready to play, loud.  He just fills the house with his boyishness and makes everything seem bigger and better.

But then SOMEONE decides to be all selfish-like and have a little girl named Nora and suddenly my ovaries wake back up again, demanding children.  Please, people.  Could you stop having such beautiful little babies so that my ovaries could focus on the task we have at hand – raising a little boy who throws keys into the toilet and spills drinks on my food and cries for me when he falls down?  Because that is a full-time job in my house and I just don’t think I can handle adding another being to my list of responsibilities.

And yet…what is that I hear?…so faint in the background?…

“we want a girl, we want a GIRL!  WE WANT A GIRL!  WE WANT A GIRL!”

For Bean’s birthday, we are celebrating by spending this coming Saturday in Disney’s Animal Kingdom (thanks to the swell folks at Disney!).  That’s when my parents and some of Chris’ family will be in town and we’ll boogey down all day together.  But I couldn’t let his actual birth day go by without some little celebration of its own.

My lovely friend, Sarah, and her husband, Scott, came over…

…along with Chris’ sister, Annie…

(More on this enormous school bus that now lives in my living room later)

and my Dad (my Mom and Grandma were unavoidably out of town).

We had a little backyard BBQ.  The old fashioned kind with a charcoal grill, store-bought potato salad, and potato chips eaten right out of the bag at the table.  Oh, and beer.

I went with the jungle theme for this little shindig so that we stayed close to the Animal Kingdom theme.

And because I am ridiculously addicted theme parties.

We had the jungle-themed “Happy Birthday” banner and the jungle print table cloth with paper plates and cups.  Though, I was disappointed to find that Budweiser did not make a jungle-themed beer bottle.

HOW CAN I PROPERLY THEME UNDER THESE CONDITIONS?!?!?

Bean didn’t seem to mind though.  He was too busy squealing/shrieking/rupturing people’s eardrums and trying to catch balloons.  He was also busy eating Cheez Its that his Granddad was sneaking him.

Before dinner, we all sat around talking (and sweating) while Bean played with his big birthday gift from me and Chris, his Step 2 Arctic Splash Water Table.  To me, it looked like a big bucket of water on legs, but to Bean it was a water wonder world…

We sat the water table inside his empty pool so that he didn’t get muddy.

By dinner, Bean was completed soaked, head to foot.  So, we had to do his FIRST costume change of the night.

This did not please The Beast…I mean, The Bean.

But the balloons on his high chair during dinner soon distracted him enough and he forgot that his shirt didn’t say, “MOST AWESOME PERSON IN THE WORLD!”  At least, that’s what we told him the other shirt said.

It’s funny when they can’t read yet.

It was miserably hot outside.  Miserably hot.  Chris and I are still living like we did in Connecticut.  Up there, when the weather was nice, you get yourself outside.  It was usually warm and sunny and a little breezy.  It was lovely.

But here in central Florida?  Sunny means 93 degrees and not a breeze a-blowin’.  So, I set up this whole dinner outside and then I made my friends and family sit outside in it and I think I almost killed them.  I was pretty sure someone was about to have a heat stroke.

So, we moved inside after dinner for birthday cake and presents.  I ordered Bean’s birthday cake from Publix, our grocery store.  They did a fantastic job!

Publix also gives you a free smaller cake for first birthdays.  I called this the face slam cake.  And it lived up to its name.

We sang happy birthday to the Birthday Boy…

And then we turned him loose on his cake.  I think what happened next is best explained visually.  Because the phrase, “It was messy,” just doesn’t do it justice…

It really wasn’t going too bad, until Bean started flapping his arms…

And then he made the fatal mistake of trying to wipe his itching nose…

At this point, it was time to call it a day.  So, I dragged Bean into the kitchen to stick him under the faucet.

But that just made him sort of oily.  So, I pulled out the big guns, stripped him down to his birthday suit right there at his own birthday party, and stuck him in the bathtub.

In college, we knew it was time to call it a night when the guest of honor started getting naked.  Turns out, the same is sort of true for one-year-old birthday parties, too.  So, everyone started heading home after that.

It was a pretty awesome night, really.  Bean had a blast and Chris and I just soaked up the success of our first year of parenting.  And who better to do that with than our closest family and friends?  It was a great night and I can’t wait to see how much fun we have on Saturday at the Animal Kingdom, too!

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Read Katie’s birthday letter to Bean over in The Bean’s Page.

Read Chris’ birthday letter to Bean over in The Man Cave.

And since Bean is now officially a man, he has a Twitter account!