Quick!

This kid is doomed to wear pants that are always either too long or too short. He's growing so fast I can't keep up with what fits. We have two plastic bins: one filled with things that are too small, and one filled with things that are too big. Inevitably, I keep missing the window on the upcoming clothes. Also: he's between shoe sizes: medium pinches his chubby feet and large looks like clown shoes that flop right off.

He's just learned to wave. It's bye bye and its also random. His English grandparents are visiting, Nain and Taid (Welsh for Grandma and Grandpa) and he's having a grand time playing with them and being taken out on very long walks where he gets to see flowers and the world.

I've just put together invitations for his first birthday party at the end of this month, and I cannot believe it's already been so long. This time last year I was very pregnant, and wrecked from not sleeping and anxiety. Against all expectation, I'm more relaxed than I've been in a long, long, time. This time two years ago I was reeling from jetlag in India and being a corporate wife for the summer, and the year before that we had just bought our house and moved in.

It was Baby Day at the hospital where he was born; we got an invitation to come take a group photo, so we went. They had invited all babies and their families born from 2006-2009, and took a group photo for each year. It made me feel almost giddy, happy to be there. As we left I teared up. It snuck up on me, the momentousness of the occasion. This was Alexander's generation, his cohort. And also, this was a thing that was only us, not our families of origin, but something else, new and exciting. The future seems full of the thrill of the unknown for the first time in a long time. Funny, that. I mean going to India was exciting, but in a very different way. I'll have to think more about how.