– 4:48 pm

Rozalia and your mother just took you out for a walk. Your grandparents left a little earlier. We’d gathered for a petit lunch to celebrate your first birthday. In typical grandiose fashion, Rozalia baked a cake fit to Celebrate All Kinds of Events. She also got us gifts. I mean of course she did. She lives for these moments. And she’s excellent at it.

Noah and Luca also sent their birthday wishes, in video format. And it’s hilarious. Luca has evolved into quite the character. He seems so… free and unbound by anyone or anything. They spend their Summer holidays in Finland every year, for about six weeks. I’ve seen pictures from Marc of them jumping into lakes and being outdoorsy. I bet they’re having a blast. They’re so big now. The way I see it, Noah’s the brain and Luca’s the muscle, two halves of a whole that would never be complete apart. You need both.

We thought about how this day could go for you and given you still have fairly severe stranger anxiety, decided not to make a meal out of it. Apparently, you won’t remember anything anyway til about the age of 3 or 4. But here’s to hoping you had fun kiddo. You are surrounded by a lot of love.

PS – My dad didn’t forget about you either.

– 6:32 am

I feel like it’s been a while since my last update. That’s been playing on my mind. So I got up a bit early to ‘pen’ this down.

I dropped you off at your grandparent’s last night. So unless something wild happened, you should still be there and asleep. Your sleep has improved dramatically. You won’t sleep in your bed but do snooze through the night and have almost wholly ridden yourself of milk and midnight feeds. You don’t even have the bottle when you wake up at times. But you are also a big boy. My word you’ve grown! We look at you and go, “Gosh he’s big”. I don’t know where the time went.

You’re big on books, like massive on books. That is your mother all the way. She’s the bookworm. But that has really pushed your development on the literacy front. Well, that and the fact that your grandmother Julia spends most of her time teaching you (everything from table manners, how to come down safely from high chairs to mimicking animal sounds).

Your favourite books currently are the ones with music. The Noisy Books as they are called. We got you Mes musiques de Mozart and what is now the go-to, Listen to the Dance Music. When the tunes come on, your hands and knees go up and down repeatedly to match the bright smile on your face. Last night you even threw in a few twirls. Without a care in the world, you’re doing this independently and uninfluenced.

Well, you’re influenced in the sense that we always have music playing in the house and we dance a lot when we carry you. So you’ve attributed sound and sonics to gesture, movement and dancing. It makes us happy to see you so free and joyous. I bought some musical instruments to enhance the habit and expand the experience. The wooden percussion set includes a tambourine, two castanets, two handbells, a wooden block with a stick, a Xylophone, a triangle, a Maracas, and a hand drum (which you won’t get all at once).

The highlight in all this however is that you gravitate to books naturally without push or shove. You have a section in one of your cupboards full of them. That’s always your first pitstop, even before any toys. You rally a few of them, log them to the floor or chair and sooner than later we’ll hear you go, “rarrrrr” when you come across a lion. Independently exploring books supposedly isn’t till the age of three. You are thirteen months. Long may it continue. I hope we (as parents) don’t fuck things up.

Another thing you’re doing prematurely is walking backwards. I didn’t even think this was a thing. But apparently, it is and comes with a host of benefits. I can definitely speak to the spatial awareness side of things because many a time, I’ve seen you adjust your body position and reduce your speed approaching tight corners. Watching you turn sideways to go in between a bucket and a table is unexpectedly satisfying. You have bumped your head on that table a few times though so I’m not surprised the wiring in your brain is holding up strong. Of course, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t remove all the corner protectors I put in place.

I nearly had a heart attack the other day. Your mother was out for a massage and it was just the two of us. I was in the kitchen, and when I turned around to check on you, you were belly-flat on the floor.

I’m pretty sure I died in that nanosecond moment. I rushed round to meet a smile on your face, blabbing with a toy in your hand. You did it again, and again and my reaction was the same every time.

I told Liza about it and she said the same way you take a book, climb a chair and sit with it, is the same way you lay on the floor for a few moments (probably because it’s comfortable and you’re beat from all that running).

Remember the vaccines you had last month? Silly question I know. You definitely don’t. I thought I’d ask anyway. Yeah, those did a number on you. The first few days were blissful, like nothing happened. But by day four, you had some type of rash on your cheeks, a strain of measles of sorts and a fever that put you beside yourself and generally under the weather. I think that’s how you developed the habit of being carried. We did a lot of that to comfort you. Now you swing your arms in the air to be carried though I think that’s because you want to see what’s cooking and love stirring into pots – a game I’ve watched you play with your granddad.

Speaking of illnesses, your friend Nico isn’t doing so well. Since starting nursery, it seems he’s down with something week in, week out. This time he has conjunctivitis. Your mother is good friends with her mum so we’re wishing them well on your behalf. We bumped into them a few weeks ago walking the river. He’s always so mellow. I gather he stood up for the first time last week (meanwhile Mr. Show-off over here is racing across the house at Tesla speeds).

Our biggest concern right now is addressing your stranger anxiety. This showcased itself again last week when your grandmother fell ill and Valery had to take care of her. We got Valentina to babysit and boy-oh-boy. It was as if you were mourning the death of your entire family all at once. There was nothing else she could do that she didn’t try to console you.

So that got me thinking, what if we had to deal with another emergency? What would that scenario look like? Near impossible to deal with at the moment is the answer. So to start mitigating that, we’re going to have Valentina babysit you once a week for about a month. I think she should be around today. There needs to be someone else who can care for you besides your immediate family. Otherwise, we’ll inevitably end up in a bind someday trying to deal with a situation that requires outside help.

While we’re showing our age, you’ve been busy flaunting your youth. So much so that I’ve had to install child locks on just about anything with a door on it. We just can’t keep up with your ultra-fast reflexes. You only need five minutes in a room to make it look like a tornado went through it, unearthing only the things that could cause serious bodily harm. I still don’t have a solution to the toilet though. I guess we’ll just carry on letting you keep creating waves in it with your hands. As you were sir, as you were.

O’And the playpen we bought to keep you in? Yeah, I’m using that now to keep you out and away from my desk and its belongings. I have completely dismantled it into what is now a ringed fence around my station. No trespassers thank you very much.

Last Sunday was Rozalia’s birthday. She wanted breakfast for it so we went to Hide (which she frequents with your mother). Fasting aside, I never was a breakfast person. My dad isn’t either. My mum was so-so. I mean how many ways can you make an omelette interesting enough to have it every morning, or cereal, porridge even? Right? Wrong. This was a creative and pretty damn good breakfast. We barely ate anything else that day. I ate that much. My body was like, “Why are you doing this? We don’t do this”, revolting the whole time. I enjoyed the eating but not the aftermath.

In this picture, I think you’d just woken up. We tried to feed you what was quite possibly the best porridge ever made and you were like, “Naaaah, I’m good thanks”, shaking your head side-to-side in refusal as you do now when you don’t want something.

We’ve run out of floor space on the fridge door for pictures. I got a photo album (from Etsy) to carry on the print tradition. It’s still bare at the moment but that won’t last long.

Right, I better go. Talk soon, son. Love you much and remain you.