My neglect of this blog for the past two months has been insurmountable. Truthfully, I had written several blogs during this time but by the time I got around to uploading pictures to post with the blog, it seemed the topics became trivial and irrelevant. A lame excuse I know. At any rate, I am making a new pledge to myself, you few and devoted followers, and mostly, Brody. While writing in this blog satisfies a deep desire to compose, I mostly keep this journal of journey to have something to show Brody when he’s older. So I will start anew (notice the redesign of his page!) as he enters the terrors of toddler years, and keep to it. I promise. I hope. We’ll see how it goes. Read on if you like...

A Quick and Long Year of Movement, and the Blue Blob

The hypocrisy of the first half of that label has settled comfortably as the only adequate way to sum up the last 365 days of our lives. Without boring you too much with a complete etymological breakdown of the word “year” and its derivatives, I must touch on the fact that through linguistic reconstruction, the word “year” comes from a Proto-Indo-European verbal root (ē-ro- and *at-no) expressing movement.¹ This fact is poignantly fitting to me as the theme of the last year for us.

When someone uses the measure of a year to set a moment in time, it can seem like forever away when you are standing at the beginning of this line of time. Mix a toddler, a house sale, and a relocation into it, and suddenly a year has passed by in the blink of an eye.

Brody turned one on June 29^th. I spent the day reminiscing about his birth and how difficult those first few weeks were for us. First came a complicated delivery, then a week of praying for my sick baby to get better and released from the hospital. Follow that with a week of sharing his precious new existence with an overwhelmingly welcoming family while nursing an insatiable need to get home and bond alone with my baby, and (never mind the raging hormones) you’ve got yourself a very emotional, exhausted, and whiny new mama.

After thinking about that period of time, I started touching on all that has been accomplished in the last year both by Brody, and by Beau and I. For us, we sold our house and moved back to Traverse City; a feat that has proven to be a great decision thus far. We are enjoying being surrounded by family and the newly established ability to breathe both literally (cleaner, fresher air!) and figuratively (much slower pace than Chicago).

But really what a flimsy feat in comparison to all Brody has accomplished. While we dredged through the stresses of selling our house and moving with a baby, this little miracle learned to smile, laugh, babble, crawl, grow teeth (6 to be exact), and finally, walk. What an amazing journey for a human to take over the course of 365 days after knowing nothing more than the warm, safe darkness of mama’s womb!

We decided to throw Brody a Birthday Bash for his big day on the 3^rd of July. Attendance peaked at 50 family members and friends, and the day was spent relishing in the sun, on the beach at Grandpa and Grandma Biederman's. Brody clearly had no clue what was going on but it didn’t matter because so long as he is the center of attention, he is in his prime element.

Beau and I have endured a new healthier lifestyle in the past months that involves eating as organically as possible. This new take on food was fueled by the documentary Food, Inc., after learning about the necessity to support local farmers and eliminate high fructose corn syrup from our diets. Truthfully I could talk about this topic for ages, but in order to avoid my typical tangent strays, I will only say that the motivation for the imperative need for this change was pure Brody.

So while I wanted to have those precious pictures of my monkey smashing into a cake on his first birthday, I didn’t want to subject him to the possibility of diabetic shock after his whole life only knowing fructose that comes in the simple form of fruit. The cake that was made for the party guests was a delicious, sugar clad, beautiful mod-monkey-themed white cake with buttercream frosting (made by TC’s local bakery, Potter’s). So I baked Brody his own low-sugar organic banana cake with blue cream cheese frosting. I plopped this blue blob onto his high-chair and awaited the highly anticipated moment of discovery, only to be let down by his disinterest. Side note – If I had frosted the cake with avocado, I think he would have devoured it.

Finally I decided the blue blob wasn't fitting the bill, and caved (who me?). I placed a piece of the delicious cake in front of him and watched him smear the frosting all over his adorable face and hands. He didn’t really devour the cake as a gluttonous fodder, but rather he seemed to enjoy the occasional sweet passing on his tongue while he smashed, smeared, and painted the frosting all over himself. I self-consciously retired the blue blob to the kitchen after his performance and regained a bit of pride when his 14-year old triplet cousins tasted it and claimed it was really good. So while I will continue to edify Brody’s take on food by distilling it from so many “bad” elements, I do understand and appreciate that sometimes, the occasion calls for caving long enough to delight in a special moment.

1 According to Wikipedia anyway...