First trip around the sun

Has time always passed this quick? I can’t remember a year having gone by so fast before. On December 23rd Anakin completed his first trip around the sun. My baby is now 1 year old and becoming a toddler. What a year it has been!

Happy 1st Birthday, baby! You rock my world!!

(Birthday fruit sculpture was supposed to occur later, but due to having to cancel his party it never happened. Sadface.)

I’ve thought a lot about life, motherhood and everything lately and here are a few things that have stood out to me, or just random things I can think of right now.

1. The road to recovery after expelling a small human being from your vagina is surprisingly long, hard and painful. Everyone tells you about pregnancy and birth, no one mentions the aftermath.
2. Young babies can projectile poo. That shit doesn’t have to hit a fan to spread.
3. You have to teach some babies to sleep, and even when they’ve figured it out they might still decide to party all night long. Those “sleepers” you hear about belong to those “other people”.
4. I have a strong dislike for parenting/baby advice from people who don’t have kids. If you’ve never breastfed a baby, don’t try to tell me how I should be doing it or for how long, and for the love of everything good, don’t even try to tell me I should be using formula if YOU’VE NEVER HAD A GODDAMN BABY YOURSELF!!
5. It’s impossible to love being a mum absolutely all the time. It’s ok to be frustrated and get pissed off on occasion. Mothers are humans too, as are babies.
6. Having a baby means people will stop inviting you to a lot of things. You’ll know it’s occurred because you’ll see a hundred photos of it on Facebook. Most of the time you’ll think “eeh.. whatever.” Sometimes you’ll think “A bbq? With all my best mates? In a park at daytime? Why couldn’t I come to that?” And then you’ll remember that you have something they don’t too, which is far better than a bbq, and quietly flip them a mental finger.
7. A lot of people will think they know what’s best for your child, but no one but you will actually have a clue. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had 20 kids. They still won’t know it all, especially when it’s about your kid.
8. It is possible to only get two winks of sleep per night, but still manage to smile a thousand smiles during the day because you’ve made the most excellent human being and he smiles at back you.
9. People who say “this too shall pass” when you’re going through a rough patch are right despite you secretly wanting to punch them in the face. Everything passes. Remember all the good bits because before you know it they will pass too as new ones arrive and baby becomes toddler and so on.
10. Hearing your kid laugh is the best sound in the world. (Followed by no sound at all as a close second.)

Anakin’s first (technically second) christmas was good. He was not interested in wrapping paper and not all that into presents at all really, but we had an excellent time, and he did get some really good presents. Due to his pappa having to finish his PhD we had to cancel his birthday party, but I think we still managed to celebrate it pretty well on the day. We’ve had two uncles from Norway visit, eaten a lot of great food, drank a lot of wine and had a great time over the holidays. Here are a few photos from the events:

Aunty Megan reads to the birthday boy

A walker is in order!

Why open presents when you can eat?

Christmas dinner with Uncle Øyvind and Evan

More presents

Eating the tree

The steering wheel with sounds was definitely a winner

Tired, happy (and unusually strange looking) parents

Hedda found the whole christmas thing rather uneventful

And of course, there was also the costume wedding and the fantastic New Year’s proposal! I’ll get to those next time.