One!
Well, it's already been a couple of weeks, but Quinn turned one year old on the 16th. I can't believe it. I also so clearly remember how awful I felt for so long a year ago. I look at pictures now of him then and I see those seeds of who he became, but I was so deep in emotional and physical trauma that it was impossible. I'm glad we still took pictures so I can marvel at them now.
His birthday party ended up being PACKED. So many people wanted to come! I had mostly felt like this about it:
Chandler Bing: Gee if only she were 1 and had no idea what the hell a birthday was!
but I guess other people wanted to celebrate, so we had a full-ass bday party.
Got our last "monthly progress" photo!
Decorations + nephew
Quinn only let Joe Waid and my dad hold him other than us lol.
We did a rainbow theme (Nyima telling what piece she wanted haha)
He enjoyed his cake
Nyima loved helping with the presents
After Quinn went to bed, nephew Clyde had been chomping at the bit all day to play this Harry Potter board game that is most fun with 8 people. I had encouraged people to stay after the party ended, and everyone but the grandparents did!
JoeWaid, Nick, Ross (Nick's BIL) and Dan all stood around talking while Steve, Courtney, brother August, sister Bethany, Clyde, Scott, Haley, Megan (Nick's sister), and her daughter Olivia all played the HP game. That's 9 though lol, maybe Bethany and Clyde were playing together. I was the gamemaster so not exactly playing but helping to explain the rules and keep the game moving.
The object of the game is to suss out who are Deatheaters. The game went on for 2 hours and people thought FOR SURE Clyde and August were Deatheaters the whole time, and in the end they guesses NONE of them right XD The amount of surprised shouting as people revealed their loyalty was a highlight of the night. So cute and funny.
(With the fans we have for white noise and the distance of Quinn's room from the basement, we have it really good that he can't hear anything at all - we never have to moderate our volume. I even play ITG sometimes after he goes to bed!)
After everyone else left, Nick, Scott, Courtney, and JoeWaid stayed until 12:30am or so just hanging. It was nice!
I did talk to JWaid about Noah, and he said Noah ONLY talks to him now, and "doesn't want to be social." He said that as far as he's aware, Noah still knows nothing about the Situation, and had asked about us from time to time in front of Pat, who deflected. He apparently is having a kid around the time of our wedding, and had told JWaid he "didn't think he'd make it" vs like, "hard pass." Steve is still being weirdly sure it's about him. It doesn't happen often, but he does get delusionally fatalistic sometimes like this. I think Noah has an eating disorder and is depressed and doesn't deserve good things in his life, and Steve and I represent possibilities for Good. Way easier to self-fulfilling prophecy.
Quinn is SO close to walking. He's so funny because he picked an activity he loves to do with each parent but NOT the other. He LOVES doing stairs with me - usually up, not down, because he clearly absorbed through modeling and observation the "correct" way to get down the stairs (facing out, standing and stepping like normal bipeds), vs the "child way" of crawling backwards and he absolutely loses his shit if we don't help him down the stairs the "right" way. BUT getting up the stairs? He looooves to do with me trailing behind him. He did eat shit by falling off the bottom stair onto the landing the other day, like tipped over straight onto his head, but he recovered quickly.
His favorite is climbing the two decently long sets of stairs at Mall of America to the Ferris Wheel. The line is never busy for the ride so he can safely climb them all he wants (and gets tons of interaction and comments from ride-goers). The stairs are SUPER disgusting, but I just wash his hands afterward and he's not super prone to eating random things off the floor. The other day we climbed the stairs 3 or 4 times before we had to leave, and he STILL wanted to stay (pointed at the stairs and expressed distress that we were leaving).
For Steve he loves standing practice. Steve helps him balance and then lets go and he stands there with a giant smile on his face and claps. It's too adorable.
Another thing that absolutely overwhelms him with delight is pushing the little kids shopping cart at Legacy Toys. Like cannot control how happy he is. I haven't been able to get a good video of it, but it's so cute. He tipped it once and bit his tongue for the first time ;A; it was so sad seeing his lil bloody spit!!! But 2 min later he was back to the cart. This time I held onto it to control the speed, and we did several laps around the whole store.
The frustration for him is that we have carpet and little runway in our house so he can't push walker toys without them tipping or running into something after a few steps. It's been raining every single day; otherwise I would actually bring a couple of his walker-style toys into the cul de sac! That would be perfect walking practice for him. Though he did have me take him out in the rain this weekend - he was interested in exploring the rain and how it felt. So sweet.
He absolutely HATED his one-year appt. Screamed his head off for his shots (calmed down soon enough but felt very betrayed by the dr). They had warned us a couple were live viruses and he might spike a high fever, but he has had no reaction. Which is good because one of them was MMR, and I had a big reaction to it when I was a baby (swelled up like I had the mumps).
We also got a referral and had a feeding/speech eval for him. The speech therapist recommended a swallow study to ensure he's not aspirating - she said because he hasn't had a ton of respiratory issue's he's probably keeping the liquids above his vocal folds, but that would explain his constant need to clear his throat/cough when eating or drinking loose/runny things, AND the fact that he wants slow-flow nipples. We are starting with three months of weekly appts to work on feeding issues. She said he is NOT showing symptoms of picky eating, and that it is likely coordination, and that kids his age usually make big progress, fast. We're looking forward to starting that on the 17th.
Overall, I'm really happy being a parent these days. I don't experience negative feelings, exasperation, anger at Quinn. I'm so much less affected by his meltdowns/whining/crying now that he's a toddler. It's like, not an emergency? Not as triggering somehow. He still is very very needy for me to be hands-on with him, even though I know he has the capacity to be independent because he is at daycare. I'm encouraging independence without forcing it. It won't be forever!