The last two weeks before you close on a house are stressful, unsettling, and sometimes filled with unwanted surprises.  In my case, my unrelenting eye problem decided to re-surface with a vengeance.  I’d been having corneal erosions at night that were getting progressively worse and were waking me up several times each night.  On Sunday morning, I had an episode that started with extreme photosensitivity, requiring me to sequester myself in our home with shades drawn, sunglasses on, and covers over my head.  I felt like I was getting paper cuts to my eyeball repeatedly for hours and hours, while my eye would water and swell to the point of not being able to open all the way.  By Sunday night, Rob had to feed me my dinner (as in actually spoon it into my mouth) because even keeping one eye open would cause the affected eye to get that “paper cut” feeling.  So I basically kept my eyes closed for 30 hours.  Rob had to stay home on Monday and tend to H.  He’d occasionally deposit Holden in bed next to me and Holden would nurse.  I could smell Holden and feel his soft baby skin, but not being able to look at him was killing me.  On Monday night  I was able to see the ophthamologist, who gave me numbing drops so he could look at my cornea.  The drops took the pain away instantly and it was like heaven.  His exam revealed that yes, my cornea is continuing to erode.  He gave me the same options as last time….contact lens bandage for a temporary fix or the same surgery I had in September, which worked pretty well for a few months but did not take away the problem altogether.  I opted for the temporary contact lens bandage since I didn’t think I could coordinate packing, work, taking care of H, and preparing for H’s first birthday party while hopped up on vicodin and recovering from surgery.  The contact lens bandage is helping immensely, but my vision is still not too hot in my one eye.  Everything is still blurry, and my depth perception is off.  On my way to work, I almost got hit by a bike and then practically tumbled down some stairs because I couldn’t gauge the distance from one step to the other very accurately.  I can’t drive, either.

And doing multi-channel pipetting with double/blurry vision is EXTREMELY challenging:

Despite those difficulties, I managed to make some progress at work today, so all was not lost.  I also found out today that I will have an office at work again, which is GREAT news!!!  After work, I walked to the sitter to pick up H, where I discovered that his playmate had bitten him on the forearm again.  Poor Holden.  It only happens when the babies are in the double stroller together, so the nanny is going to push the heavier baby in the stroller (Holden), while wearing the lightweight baby in a carrier.  Problem solved (hopefully).

During work and everything in between, we fielded calls from the settlement attorney (who alerted us to a mysterious zoning permit that is still open on our property), and an electrician (who claimed that the fire marshal who did our city-mandated inspection was on crack and was asking for things that weren’t possible).  Probably the worst part of this move has been trying to hand over the association accounts to the other owners.  All of the major accounts (including the commercial checking account) were in my name, so I’ve had to do a lot of work to get things transitioned smoothly to the downstairs owners (yes, the same downstairs owners whose daughter despises my son).  It’s kind of a long story and not worth recounting here, but one of the things that came about from all of this account-shuffling was the fact that the downstairs folks had essentially been double-billed for the past 3 years on their hot water heater rental.  So I had to cut them a check for almost $500 out of the account!  I have to pay the last few common expenses from that account, wait for the checks to clear, and then can FINALLY transfer the balance to them.  Whew.  I guess I can add “managing a condominium association” to my resume, for whatever it’s worth.

My folks are flying in from West Virginia on Friday for Holden’s huge birthday bash on Saturday.  I am so excited to see them, but dang, I have a TON of shit to do.  And then it’s also Father’s Day on Sunday.  And I would like to have diabetes-friendly meals ready to accommodate my mom’s dietary needs during their visit.  And I need to finish shopping for H’s birthday party.  And on Friday the fire marshal comes back to re-inspect our property and look at all of the stuff the electrician said he wouldn’t do.  And then that night I have to go back to the eye doctor and get my eye worked on again.  And my grandfather broke his hip and is in the hospital and I need to send him a card sometime this week.  And my grant isn’t getting written.  And I need to take better care of myself so my cornea will stop eroding…

Hard to believe that Holden will be a year old in a little over a week from now.  We have managed to take Holden’s picture every single day of his life thus far (except for once, where we regretfully forgot after a particularly stressful day).  I wanted to do a month-by-month representation of our year with Holden…so here goes!

June 21, 2008.  Approximately 17 hours before Holden was born.  I was overdue and extremely uncomfortable, and 4 cm dilated, but somehow not in labor at all.  I was doing a mile and a half walk around town with Rob, hoping that real actual labor would start.  Eleven hours after this picture was snapped, I got my wish.  

June 22, 2008:  First picture of Holden, at about 12 minutes old.  Weighed in at 8 lbs. 10 oz!  

It felt like we were in the hospital forever, although I was glad to get extra help from the wonderful nurses and lactation consultant.  When we weren’t nursing, we were being lazy:

Although you’d never guess it now, one of the first thoughts I had when I first saw Holden was “How did he get such DARK hair??!”  Just look at that hair…

Eventually, we were ready to leave the hospital:

And once we got home, Holden nursed and nursed and nursed.  He didn’t cry very often.  As long as he was nursing, he was a happy boy!  He wanted to be held at all times, although swaddling was sort of a useless technique because our little Houdini could get himself unswaddled in about 5 seconds flat.

So I held him (here he is at 5 days old):

And read to him (this is where I set the stage for his current book obsession, I am convinced).  And yes, I am always wearing that red shirt.  It was one of the few things that fit me, at the time.

One month old:

Two months old:

Three months old:

Four months old:

Five months old (he was a seriously fat infant!):

Six months old:

Seven months old:

Eight months old:

Nine months old:

Ten months old:

Eleven months old:

And most recently uploaded:

What will the next 12 months bring??

Our little guy took some of his first steps yesterday.  He walked from our chair over to the couch, slowly and methodically, while laughing and giving me a look that indicated he could hardly believe he was actually doing it on his own!  I had a feeling that he would start taking his first steps yesterday.  All day, he kept going back to his little red wagon, which I had reluctantly brought back out for him to use (I had it put away for a while because it made too much noise and bothered the neighbors).  Holden really seemed like he wanted to use it, so I let him walk around the house with it.  He walked and walked and walked.  And then he finally walked for real without any sort of assistance.  He was giddy while he walked, like the excitement of it was going to cause him to lose his balance and fall toppling to the floor.  

I remember that sense of excitement from my own youth—not with walking, but with learning to ride a bike.  I remember the first time I rode a bike without training wheels.  I believed that my father was going to be holding on to the bike the whole way down the hill in our front yard, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw him way behind me at the top of the hill, waving proudly.  In that moment, I was so surprised and excited that I could ride my bike myself, that I felt my balance waver and my concentration soften.  I didn’t fall off my bike but I did wobble slightly from side to side, not unlike Holden’s uneven gait as he made his way over to the couch.  

To me, the real triumph is not  that Holden walked; rather, it is his recognition that he was capable of doing something novel, precisely coordinated, and uniquely human.

4:45pm: An early dinner — homemade bread and homemade potato chowder.  H. gets a slice of the bread and some diced potato; also his sippy cup with some water.

4:46pm: H. manages to get himself wet from squirting the water all over himself.  Que sera sera. Take away the sippy cup, for now.

4:51pm: H. has chewed up about half of a palm-sized piece of sea-salt encrusted herb bread.  He doesn’t really seem to be swallowing it.  It’s just taking up space in there.  We try to coax him to spit some out without any real success.  Take away the other half of the bread to encourage him to eat the bits of potato.  Marginal success there.

4:57pm: Winding down our own dinner, we scrutinize H.’s palate again.  Much of the potato is gone from his tray, surprisingly little of it is on the floor, but he’s still got quite a bit of bread on the roof of his mouth.  We hazard a little biting and screaming while we scrape some out.  The bolus isn’t as large as a ping pong ball but it sure seems that way.

5:04pm: Clear the table.  A. takes The Boy to get cleaned up and out of his diaper.  I clear the table.

5:10pm: Start the water in the tub.  H. crawls around the house, fast as ball lightning and naked as a jaybird.

5:12pm: Drop H. in the tub.  Commence splashing.  A. retrieves the S.S. Mr. T to attempt slight abatement of splashing.

5:13pm: H. tries to hydrate by sucking bathwater from the washcloth.  Let that one go.

5:16pm: Commence actual washing of H.

5:22pm: Washing is done.  Allow H. to splash for a few more minutes.

5:25pm: Remove H. from tub, bundle up in a towel.  A. moves the drying/dressing operation into H.’s room; I drain the tub and clean up as best I can.

5:30pm: Five more minutes of naked crawling is enough, right?

5:35pm: Okay, ten minutes is enough.  Getting the diaper on is easy.  The pajamas, less so.

5:40pm: When did five whole minutes becomes “quick” for putting pajamas on an infant?

5:41pm: A. notices more bread bolus on the roof of H.’s mouth.  How did that get there?

5:42pm: Suffer a slight bite while retrieving the bolus.  If you put the two bits together, surely they add up to a ping pong ball.  It’s ridiculous, really.

5:44pm: Retrieve toothbrush.  (Side note:  has anyone else noticed that the “baby safe” toothpaste comes in a tube like model cement?  If it weren’t for the fruity smell, I’d swear they were just putting a different label on this stuff.)  Attempt to brush H.’s six teeth.  He lets me go at it for a minute or two.

5:46pm: Steal the toothbrush back from H.; the oral hygiene portion of the evening is over.

5:47pm: Kiss H. on the forehead and tip-toe out while A. nurses him (more/less) to sleep.

6:11pm: A. emerges and H.’s room is very quiet indeed.

Moving, starting back to work, and chasing after a baby are leaving me more than slightly exhausted.  This week we had inspections on our condo as well as on our new house.  The inspection of the house did not reveal any surprises, although we definitely have our work cut out for us.  I snapped a few pictures while we were there and thought I would share.

I took pictures of the front of the house from the car because it was raining.  From where we were parked, I couldn’t fit the whole house in the frame, so I had to take 2 shots:

And the rest of the front, including the garage:

The upper deck (I expect to enjoy many cookouts, glasses of wine, and cups of coffee out here):

And lower deck (the deck requires some finishing work):

Part of the backyard.  H will have somewhere to play outside!

Woodburning fireplace in living room (this feature is more aesthetic than functional, as we will actually lose a lot of heat up the chimney; thus we will likely only use it for special occasions):

Ahh….70’s era wall cutouts between the dining room and living room.  I imagine H and I will play peek-a-boo through these things:

The super huge awesome kitchen.  It has a super awesome DISHWASHER.  And also a microwave, which is a good thing because our microwave died last month.  The kitchen is outdated but we have lots to work with here.  Definitely the best kitchen we’ve ever had!

More hot kitchen action:

View from kitchen into dining room:

View from dining room out to upper deck:

This house has 4 bedrooms.  We’re using two of those rooms as actual bedrooms for our little family.  The third bedroom will become a guest bedroom and the fourth bedroom will be a huge office/library.  This room will eventually become H’s bedroom.  The paint will be the first thing to get changed in this house:

This will become our bedroom:

The downstairs family room has an efficient gas stove.  It will really help to heat the house in the winter months:

Those are the highlight shots from our inspection.  We have some work to do on the electric and roof, plus lots and lots of updating, but it should work out to be a super awesome home for us.  Did I mention that the neighbors are really nice??

Other than that, just chasing H around, feeding H, feeding H more, and then feeding him again 10 minutes later.  He actually ordered something off a kid’s menu a few weeks back and managed to eat about a third of it in one sitting.  I never seem to pack him enough food for his 2 days a week at the nanny.  Last night for dinner he had a “snack” of whole wheat pasta with red pepper sauce followed by a quarter of my sesame-soy sirloin steak and about a third cup of chopped broccoli.  He wouldn’t stop eating!!!  Yesterday I gave H his second haircut and I managed to really botch it.  He wouldn’t sit still and kept rocking back and forth and squirming.  I cut it too short in some places and it’s really uneven in the back and around his ears.  Oh well.  It’ll grow out again fast enough and I’ll have an opportunity to redeem myself.  Going back to work has been good for me, although I’ve realized that it’s practically impossible to do science part-time.  I never manage to make the sort of progress that I feel I need to make.  I have a self-imposed deadline of August to submit another grant, and I don’t see it happening at this point.  I think maybe it might work out better when we’re in the new place and I have a desk to work at.  Without an actual office at home or at work, my options are limited.  So that’s it for now….I’m hoping that H abandons his current whining jag that is no doubt induced by teething pain.  We’re all zombies in our house right now, except for the cat perhaps, who probably caught some shut-eye last night while hiding in the couch.  Some days, I really wish I could hide in the couch too.