This Friday Isaiah turns 1. I find myself 'daydreaming' and reliving the day that he came to be with us, back on April 3 2008. I remember thinking as we left the driveway that the next time I returned home, it would be with a son. I remember being in awe and almost emotionless when they handed him to me in the hospital. I remember seeing his beautiful blue eyes when they opened and stared at the bouquet of flowers Dan had brought to the hospital. I remember our first night at home, when we mistakenly concluded 'he couldn't possibly want to eat again--he just ate an hour ago!' I remember trying to take the advice from people about "enjoying every minute of it, because it goes by so quickly". Well, it has! Thanks for the advice. I have had the luxury of being able to stay home and watch him grow this past year, and look forward to what lies ahead.

Yesterday at church, I was running around soliciting people for their musical talent (I'm a tad busy with choir stuff lately) and Dan walked with Isaiah all around the Social Hall during Coffee Hour. He (Isaiah) is getting really good at walking while holding onto only one hand, and it's really neat but terrifying at the same time, because it heralds a time when he will be walking alone. They met up with another little girl several months older than Isaiah, and Isaiah promptly crawled up to her with a huge grin and made his advance. Words cannot do it justice, but when Isaiah is infatuated or even mildly interested in someone or something, he normally expresses this by planting a big wet plunger-like kiss on his/her/its face, sometimes involving teeth (of which he has 6). He has also learned that grabbing people by the hair at the nape of the neck decreases exponentially their ability to resist his plunging, and utilizes that to its maximum capacity. We let him do that to us at home, but I think we need to start setting some guidelines regarding what is acceptable in public so that he will not be plungering other kids on the playground.

Another interesting anecdote was from yesterday, when we were at our friends' house. They have a little girl a few months younger than Isaiah, and she had a pacifier in her mouth. Isaiah was standing next to her and began to reach for her pacifier. I told him "No, Isaiah, that's Anna's pacifier." He didn't acknowledge me, but reached out again, which is when I repeated the phrase in Japanese. He looked straight at me, then turned to play with other things. It could be coincidence, or it could be that hearing the command a second time was effective, but I do wonder if he understands Japanese a little better right now. When it's just the two of us (and even sometimes when Dan is home) I speak to him in Japanese, so it's possible that he is picking it up more readily than English. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

He's had an ear infection for a few weeks now, and the stronger round of antibiotics give him some interesting diaper innards. Hopefully this antibiotic will eliminate any of the residual infection and we can go back to normalcy in pooping once again. I know it's not the most pleasant dinner-table topic, but I have a newfound appreciation for normalcy in bodily functions, and have come to the conclusion that all too often we take these for granted. The fact that our bodies function the way they do and (without our knowing it) absorb what they need and eliminate what they don't is quite amazing if you think about it.

I've posted a few pictures from recent months. We've been bad about taking pictures lately.. I think we've been enjoying the real thing too much, if that's possible. I'm really hoping that spring will come and stay soon. We're both getting cabin fever and can't wait to get out on daily walks again. Especially when Isaiah starts walking on his own, I think that will be essential to maintaining sanity.

The ironic thing about blogs is that, when you have time to update them, it's because you don't have anything going on in life. Conversely, when your life is exciting and worth reporting to people, you have little time (and desire) to update the blogs. At least that is how it has been for me. That means that since July 10, 2008, we have been keeping fairly busy. Why the sudden desire (or time) to update now? It's not necessarily because I have significantly more time (although that's certainly true), but rather so that we will actually have a written record of Isaiah's early days and hopefully years. His baby book is patiently waiting to be filled out and has been since we received it last year. I have done some of it, but I must admit, I'm not a great scrapbooker, and find such a task daunting. I do plan to get around to it one of these days, and hopefully I will fill it out more regularly than my own parents did. Evidence of this is that according to my Mom, who filled out my baby book, not so diligently, I apparently learned how to walk, was potty-trained, drank from a cup, used my own utensils, and learned how to talk at 2 years of age. Must have been a busy year. Anyway, now that I am going through this whole Mom stage of life, I can't hardly blame her (especially since I was the second of 4 kids). At any rate, I'm hoping to update this a little more frequently, so that we do have some history of what Isaiah and perhaps others to come did growing up.

So. Where to start? Since the last time I posted, quite a bit has happened. I have to admit, a lot of his development is all slurred together in my mind because I was also trying to finish up my Ph.D. last fall. By God's grace and Dan's willingness to stay home more to help me out, I defended on 12/17, and ever since then have been enjoying lower stress levels. I highly recommend it. My hope was that Isaiah would not learn to crawl until I was done with the Ph.D., and that was precisely what happened. He learned to crawl over Christmas break, while we were at Dan's parents' house, and that was quite exciting for us. He also got to meet his Aunt Jackie (my sister) as she popped in for a surprise (to me) visit from San Francisco. I couldn't have mail-ordered a better Christmas.

Prior to Christmas, (going backwards here) our fall was not JUST thesis-writing and eating out a little more than normal. We also managed to work in some fun family time. We had bought a weekend at a cabin up in Treasure Lake, PA, and at the end of October at the peak of the fall colors, we went up there for some vegging out, really good hiking, some video game playing (??), a visit with Melinda and Dale (Dan's uncle and aunt), and the best part of it was that neither of us had access to the internet, and thus could not have worked even if we had the motivation! That is my idea of a vacation! Isaiah loves being outside, and loved the little hiking backpack that he rode in while we hiked. Good times... Oh, and they had a fireplace too.

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to Richmond, VA where a lot of my cousins and relatives on my Dad's side live. My Grandpa, who is 94, had also recently moved down there to a nursing home, and it was great to see him and introduce him to Isaiah. It is a lot harder for him to speak these days, but we didn't need a whole lot of words this time. That was a blessing. Isaiah, who has raccoon tendencies, fell in love with (and spit up on, of course) my Grandpa's gold watch, but then fell asleep in Grandpa's arms. It was beautiful.

We drove to Michigan for Christmas, and the day we arrived, we cross-country skiied in 3-4 feet of snow. They had had white-outs, most churches had been cancelled, and we were looking forward to lots of playing in the snow. That night it rained and by morning all the snow was gone. It never returned while we were there. Boy were we glad we packed those skis! :)

My new life as a full-time Mom began after Christmas, and I love it. The weather hasn't been overly cooperative, so the last few months we've had a lot of cabin fever, but hopefully in the weeks to come we'll be able to get out more. I often put Isaiah in the Mei Tai and go for long walks with him. I know we have a stroller, and I know he likes that just fine, but while he's still small enough, I do like having him close enough to me that we can 'talk' to each other and I can enjoy his responses (all joyful) to being outside. We, I mean he, has stopped traffic (literally) on our walks because he is so happy and people in their cars stop and look at him flapping his arms and squealing, and forget that they are in the turning lane, or in the middle of the intersection, etc. It's kind of dangerous, actually. He is very sociable, and will usually give people a flirtatious smile and sometimes even a 'high five five five five..." (he'll bat their hand several times. In the last two weeks or so, he has started imitating us more and more, which is, honestly, somewhat unnerving. Dan will often crawl on the floor with Isaiah following behind him and they look like two elephants. Isaiah has started trying to clap his hands (not much success yet), and loves to bang two objects together to see if they make noises. Blocks, hard books, slotted spoon on cookie sheet--yes. Banana pieces, not so much. We had one of our first 'discipline' sessions yesterday, which was quite the adventure. He has figured out how to make motor sounds with his mouth (read: spitting), which are quite cute, and we have made the mistake of encouraging this. The bad part is when you put baby food in his mouth and he decides to 'motor' it all out all over the feeder or his high chair or who knows where else. We had to keep taking him out of his high chair, telling him 'no spitting' every time he did that yesterday. It was obviously not a huge hit with him, but he learned pretty quickly. The hardest part is keeping a straight face while you try to discipline him. It's pretty much impossible.

He is able to walk pretty quickly if you hold his hands, so we're guessing within the next few months (weeks?) he might just take off. He can climb the stairs like a pro, but descending the stairs is a different matter. He can do it, but with painful results, as we discovered last saturday (and is evidenced by his nice shiner--oops). It didn't seem to phase him though, because he was back at the stairs this morning. He is able to walk fairly well (still looks pretty drunk) if you hold his hands, so maybe within the next few months or weeks (??) he might just take off. Again, I hope it's at a time when going outside on a daily basis is a viable option. We have a nice little park right behind our house, and I think we'll take advantage of that for sure.

He's a good kid--incredibly happy, and I can't remember what life was like before we had him.