Some of the supermarkets here leave out kid-sized baskets for the children to use. This is very evil of them.
My son is nearly 20 months old now and recently, I’ve started having startled moments where I look at him and no longer see a big baby but a very little boy. It’s not a huge change and he doesn’t metamorphose into something else overnight.
And yet he does too. All the time. Little changes and then they’re big changes after all and time goes so quickly really.
On Saturday (29/10), Mr K finally turned one.
I seemed to run the full gamut of emotions in the lead-up to the big milestone, golden fuzzy warm nostalgia all the way down to bleak, dissolve-into-tears mess with no idea how the hell I’d made it this far and certain that I couldn’t manage it for much longer. Extreme, yes, but the year has encompassed both those feelings and all that lies between, so why not?
And here we are.
Mr K is 12 months old, but we should really say one year now. I don’t know if I can still call him a baby? He still acts very much like a baby, though. He babbles at length, crawls everywhere, and finds inane objects utterly interesting. He stands up a lot but only when holding something, and he has taken a strong liking to opening and closing things, pulling things out and putting them in different places entirely. He doesn’t walk yet, but he is determined to skip that and climb on things instead.
The time has been, and still is, so very distorted. How can one year have passed already, yet how can it have been only one? The days are long but the year(s) are short indeed.
My name is Lyssa and I’m a baby carrier convert.
This afternoon, Mr K was grizzling after lunch. He was tired following his unwilling participation in an ESL class and the broccoli I had presented him with as finger food with was not to his satisfaction. After trying to settle him elsewhere, I gave up and wrangled him into his carrier, slinging it onto my back like a backpack. He immediately calmed down and, ten minutes later, he was asleep.
The baby carrier is a relatively recent acquisition. Up until Mr K was 10 months old, we lugged him around with our arms and I his pram. Shortly after we moved into our new house, though, a neighborhood earthquake drill happened and we were told to make areangementS for something with which we could carry Mr K on our backs. I grudgingly went out and forked over five thousand yen for a carrier that looked like it might do and we proceeded to participate in the drill.
And something else happened too. We fell in love with the carrier.
It’s relatively easy to use, it frees up my hands, and most importantly, Mr K is happy because he’s still nestled close to me. Yes, it hurts my back and shoulders a bit, but back pain is part of this baby gig and you get used to this particular version and the pay-off is very, very worth it.
I have to admit I’m a little frustrated with myself because I knew all this before he was born. I bought a secondhand carrier because not everyone else entirely sold on it, and it didn’t work out very well, not least because carriers just are kind of awkward for very little babies (you’re better if with some sort of sling, apparently). I bought another one that I didn’t really like, and then I gave up.
And I really wish I hadn’t! I could have saved myself a lot of anguish if I’d just stuck to my gunson this instead of letting my eroded self-esteem get a little bit more so.
Anyhow, we’ve got it now and Mr K and I are both a little happier for it.
For making me pointlessly anxious, there is nothing quite like seeing R drive off with Mr. K in the backseat of the car. Continue reading
I’ll miss the bamboo forest outside the window
As quiet as it can be when there is a temperamental baby and dramatic thunderstorms involved, anyway. Continue reading
As of today, Mr. K has matched the nine months he spent on the inside with nine months on the outside. Continue reading
Yesterday, I was wandering around one of the large secondhand stores with Mr K when I saw a heavily pregnant woman buying a bunch of baby toys and was consequently hit by a wave of nostalgia.She could have been me nine months ago, albeit a small Japanese version, preparing anxiously for a baby that could arrive at any minute.
Sometimes, I still feel disbelief that this is where I am in my life, a nanosecond of shock as I remember that yes, I actually have a baby. A baby that is hurtling towards being eight months old, no less, officially an “older” baby. It is downright strange to visit baby goods stores and see the little newborn clothes and be reminded, with a start, that this is actually behind us.
We’re here and, somehow, incredibly, we’re keeping on going.
