12 Months: Noble On Parade

As many wise women foretold, Noble started walking on her birthday. 20 pounds. 30 inches tall. Having trained for weeks with a couple steps to her credit, nothing could have prepared me for such a confident wobble. Tears at the ready, I was so thrilled and swollen with pride I had a hard time reacting in a way that wouldn't frighten her. A walking baby is visible proof that the project I've been working on for the last year does in fact have legs. Chubby, silken legs.

If you don't see the video above,  please follow this link for your four free minutes of a baby becoming a girl. We've watched it. Highly recommended.

To celebrate, we lunched at the restaurant where my water broke last year, but made a much more obvious mess under the table with whimsically dropped grains of rice. We took her to Little Land, where she hugged, clawed and socialized with her peers until nap time. Endorphins pumping, I gave her the keys and turned the A/C fan to full blast. "Take us home, you beast."

Back at home I baked a batch of dense, sunken, vaguely-flavored v/gf cupcakes and invited her tiny bestie Wiley, aged two and a half, to guide her through the birthday proceedings. I served animal crackers and berries so he would have something to feed her, (a favorite party trick) and filled the pool to maximum capacity. The dress code was after-five/garden party. Noble chose a pink tankini and navy blue bow for her hair, which stayed put for a record 2 hours. Bill wore disco shorts, Wiley none.

Turning one was a success. The toughness of her first cupcake was just toothsome enough for her tender teeth, and kept her busy for a nice long while. I put her back in the pool when she'd spread her frosting as far as it would go and scrubbed her clean with a bit of ball moss. I often stop and wonder what her life would be like if we'd stayed in the Northwest, picking fresh berries, hiking and visiting all the parks and islands and shores year round. To compensate I've been encouraging unlimited leaf sucking and stick tasting until the mosquitoes start to swarm. We spent a few days in August visiting Seattle, so she could meet her great uncle, big trees, mountain vistas and her newest passion: the beach.

I tried to warn her that water in the Puget Sound is a cold lover. Teasing you close as it laps and rushes, then slapping you fresh in the face with its icy smother. As she charged the surf again and again her gasping choked back sobs, and my feet were instantly numbed in pursuit. Back on land, she learned that sand is a warm friend full of secrets, and her appetite brought home extras every time we visited the shore. At home after I finished shaking it out of our luggage, I wondered if I should have bottled some. But saving things like that seems like a gateway to storing up fingernail clippings, and those don't really age with dignity.

Nine months of incubating and a year of feeding, changing, carrying, soothing, treasuring and soldiering on. I have regained almost all of my freedoms, -  not sneezing, coughing, running or jumping, - and have started to expand my imagination beyond raising a person. When we're alone together I try to leave her to her studies and experiments, and watch as she seeks and finds. Though her thirst for dirt is unquenchable, I'm comfortable letting her toddle out into the grass. The yard, serving ambrosia by the tiny fistful, is likely to be my best tool for weaning her from the breast, but we're taking our time. I thought I'd be more aggressive about weaning when her teeth grew in, but she's been surprisingly well-mannered. As long as I can provide a quiet, held space for her to relax and forget about her growing pains and spastic body and find a little peace for myself, I'll suffer the occasional love bite. And when she bites, how the love does flow.