Celebration Season

Late spring is a good time to be born. It's also a good time to have a baby. We've had two solid months of lots of celebration, birthdays and otherwise.

I missed mother's day last year by less than a week. Of course I had constant reminders that I was a mother at that point. They came in the form of kicks to the ribs and heartburn, but that could never compare to having Miriam here in person. I never could have guessed all that this first year of motherhood has been - so much laughter and tears and learning. We celebrated with a delicious meal on the sunny patio of a Cambridge cafe that we'd been eyeing for some time.

The pinnacle of celebration came the following Sunday on Miriam's first birthday. One of my friends here with older children told me, "You just have to make it through the first year." At that point, Miriam was four months old, and the all-important first birthday seemed so far away. And here we are now with a vivacious one year old that loves life almost as much as we love her. We celebrated with an open house at our place where our friends could drop by, and of course there was plenty of family on hand to love on her. It was also my mom's birthday that week, and she was here to add to the celebration.

She was quite bewildered as to why everyone was singing to her, 

not to mention the flaming food near her face.

The two birthday girls

At church on her actual birthday

A monkey cake for our monkey

The birthday spread with a timeline of photos of her

My birthday is just two weeks and two days after Miriam's. Zach gave me a break from the kitchen and made a delicious dinner for us complete with carrot cake. He also gave me time in the kitchen for my birthday - time, that is, in a restaurant kitchen with a local chef who grew up in the south of France. I spent the Saturday following my birthday along with a small group of people learning how to make specialty dishes for summer from the southwest of France. It was a completely new experience and made me miss all the delicious food that we readily had available in France. 

And now here we are on the eve of father's day, and it seems fitting to celebrate Zach after all these other celebrations. Through all the ups and downs of the first year of parenting and the second year of marriage, he has been so solid in his patience, reason, and love. Miriam and I are so lucky to have him in our lives!

Thus wraps up my (usually tardy) monthly updates of Miriam's first year. I mentioned to a couple people that I would probably wrap up the blog with this post as it doesn't quite top the ever-growing to-do list. However, their response convinced me that this is indeed worth doing occasionally and appreciated by others. Hopefully this will be a place where our friends and family far and wide can get a glimpse of what we're up to, and if you're only coming in search of an inordinate amount of cute photos of Miriam, there will be plenty of that as well.