many mundane moments

reflections on birthdays

first, the one a few days ago-

Howie has a very set idea of what a birthday party means. Any mention of the words birthday or party and he interjects, "birthday cake? ice cream? hats?" He also asks almost daily for "burger and tries." It seemed like a simple enough wishlist to fill.

We broke out the party hats after his nap while we were preparing to go out to dinner. They lasted all of about 2 minutes. He kept crying that it hurt and pulled his off, and he ran screaming from the room if anyone else had one on. Fine by me, I wasn't all that excited to wear one.

We hadn't eaten fast food with him for several weeks, so we took him somewhere with a playland and ordered a hamburger kids' meal. He wouldn't touch the hamburger- not even the tiny sliver Matt tore off and tried to get him to taste. He did enjoy the fries and yelling, "hey, kid!" as he followed older children around the playland. I don't know why I expected him to eat a hamburger, since he's never actually had one. I just figured we'd honor his constant request. Next time we'll stick with some sort of meat by-product pressed into nugget or hotdog form.

Speaking of barely recognizeable food products, here's the birthday cake. Here's my sloppy attempt at a fun cake. I'm no Amber (unless it's this Amber). Howie recognized it for a firetruck, so I guess that's the important part.
Here are a couple hints:
1. don't assume the grocery store bakery can make a red that tastes any less like food coloring than you can.
2. the bakery's black frosting tasted fine, but even the smallest taste dyed your whole mouth.
3. family fun overestimates required frosting amounts by roughly 300%.

We ended up throwing out several cups of inedible red slop. The biggest selling point would be the residue it left in my kitchen sink. Much like plaque candy, it showed me just where I needed to clean. We also had copious amounts of black left. Tedi used some on a cake for a party she wasn't all that excited to go to and the rest is in the fridge. Really, I should have thrown it out, but it tastes okay and I couldn't bring myself to toss both containers. The worst part about the cake is that we couldn't even scrape the frosting off and enjoy the rest. We were out of eggs and Matt was gone with the car all day so I revived a recipe we had tested out for last year's cake when he had more food issues that we had to be careful of. It was a little dense and chewy and not all that enjoyable.

Luckily, Howie seemed to enjoy snacking on red dye #40 and Rice Dream's unconvincing attempt at ice cream. I guess at two you don't notice the quality of your food so much as getting to run and play. Really, it was a pretty fun evening. Except the bath that he usually loves was nothing short of torture because it kept him from his new toys. He got some great gifts and continues to ask to open more presents. It was fun to watch him and I'm excited for this Christmas with him, but I don't think we'll be able to put any under the tree before it's time to open them.

and on a completely different note, the birthday two years ago-

I've been thinking about Howie's birth a lot this last week. I don't know if it was looking through all the pictures for the last post that triggered all the memories, or if it is the fact that I'm well into another pregnancy and scared of facing everything again. Whichever it is, I can say for sure that I've come a long way in terms of those fears from where I was a year ago.

Last year we picked out a boy and girl outfit in the up to 7lb size and took them to the NICU on his birthday. [When he was finally out of the warming basinet and able to wear clothes after he was born, there weren't many options in the hospital's collection for full-term babies. Everything was premie sized, and too small for even our little guy.] It was really hard to go back up that hallway exactly one year from when we first had and face that room again, but I think it was good for us. I also think it was part of our healing process to turn around and walk back out with our boy in our arms. We thought we would make it a tradition, but it didn't seem like a priority this year. I'm not sure if that's because we didn't make it a priority, or because we've faced that fear and dealt with some of the emotions involved.

The thing is, I didn't realize I had so many things I needed to deal with until I got off the elevator and had to make my way up that hallway. He had surgery the day before his first birthday and so I don't know if I was too focused on that to reflect much on the events of the year prior or whether I wasn't ready to dwell on them. Everything came back as I remembered how many times I trekked up and down that corridor between the healthy babies and mine. All the fear and anxiety, the sadness and helplessness were echoed in our footsteps.

I left feeling a little shell-shocked, and began to process those feelings over the next few weeks. Everything resurfaced two months later when we went to visit Sabra after S was born. I pushed it down. As the next few months passed, the feeling that it was time to have another baby crept in. I ignored it. The stronger it felt, the louder I proclaimed that it would be years before I got pregnant again, if ever.

Skip a few months and bi-polar moments and you all know the rest of the story (as evidenced by the swift kicks to my bladder enjoyed as I wrote this). I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than how incredibly blessed I feel to have Howie- our amazing, bright, loving and for the most part healthy boy. I know our NICU experience was relatively short and uncomplicated compared to many other parents, but I'm absolutely terrified of repeating any part of that. I'd better get past that soon, or I'll have my OB ordering sleeping pills before I go into labor instead of a few days after like last time. Maybe I should go buy some newborn more clothes and see what else bubbles up when I drop them off.

posted by Valarie @ 12:47 AM