Birthday Party and Father's Day

It's probably impossible for me to get perspective on this kind of thing, raising a baby, being a father. To say that you're "so close to it" or "to close to being able to look objectively" betrays the truth of parenting: if you're not that close at this early stage you've failed.

Today itself is Father's Day, and for the second year in a row, we went out to breakfast at a nearby hip diner called The Breakfast Bar. Last year was my first Father's Day in any sense, and we'd had the baby with us for a week. Because of some confluence of events he came five weeks earlier than we were expecting, and our task once we got home was pretty daunting. 

Every three hours we had to wake him up and try to feed him. He was teeny-tiny and barely ate. It was very stressful, and add in that we couldn't sleep more than 2 hours at a time and the world becomes very small.

He caught up on weight, sprinted past the pack, and is now a very big boy. We even avoided any NICU time.

But that first Father's Day, last year, was at the beginning of the Hardness, after just the first week. It was the first time we had left the house for something other than a pediatrician or lab visit. Born on Friday, went home Sunday, Monday pediatrician visit, Tuesday pediatrician, Wednesday lab, Thursday lactation consultant, Friday pediatrician...

That Sunday, Father's Day, we realized that the sun was out after our 5 am feeding ended and we had finished the cleanup and pumping. We were the second people in after they opened at 6.

A week short of a year later and we hosted a birthday party for Cassius, our big boy. We weren't going to do anything big, or at all, when my mom asked that if we were going to do something, that we let her know so she can come.

That settled it: we would do something small for her and Auntie Peg and Bobbi and a few of the other moms from our Bradley group...and a few of the friends we have in LA...and and and...

It grew into mostly standing room only at our tiny apartment. We had a nice spread of food provided by me, finger sandwiches and dips, crudites and fruit, most of it able to be eaten by our vegan guest.

The "cake" was one of Corrie's vegan carrot/apple muffins (they're unbelievably good) with cream cheese frosting like you'd find on carrot cake. Since Cass doesn't really like having his hands or fingers all gooey, he mostly skipped the frosting. Here we are, him sans shirt (to keep it nice) and me with my eyes shut:

Look how swanky he looks in his new Colombian drug-lord hat Grandma Kate gave him:

She also let him play with her phone for about thirty seconds and he was able to snap a selfie:

From earlier today at The Breakfast Bar:

2017

And last year, the weariness on my face is obvious to me, and it looks like we're new parents, but look at the difference a year makes for the baby:

2016