Happy Birthday, Kid!

(This should've been posted yesterday, but I wasn't at the computer much. Pretend it's yesterday, OK? When you don't show up for work tomorrow, just tell your boss that tomorrow is today, and s/he should respect your beliefs regarding the today-ness of any given day.)

Yeah, yeah, it's Valentine's Day. It's never been my favourite "holiday" (and by holiday I mean entirely commercialized day for the card stores and candy makers to line their fat, fat pockets), either because of the exclusive nature of the whole thing- "No Valentine? I guess nobody loves you. SUCKER!!!"- or the way it takes love, something we should be expressing every day, and turns it into a syrupy, pink-and-red day to set high expectations for romance and general mushiness. I can't even walk through the card section at Wal-Mart without getting my shoes stuck in it, like the floor's covered in saccharine* bubble gum.

We don't really need a special day to celebrate love, or to say, "Put me on your honey-do list, Honey." Aj and I don't ignore it, though- hey, any excuse for chocolate and a hand-made card or love letter is great! I just don't think we NEED a special day when they're expected.

Last year changed February 14th for us forever. Isaac was born some time after 8:00 a.m.- I'm a little fuzzy on the details. There were a lot of drugs in my system, and I was kind of concentrating on the fact that I was completely unable to move my legs. It was a planned c-section, so we knew we'd be having a Valentine's day baby, which was fine by us. At least we know it'll be hard for people to forget his birthday.

We're not having a big party. We still don't know a lot of people around here and, honestly, it's not like he's going to treasure the memories of his first birthday for the rest of his life. He likes the new toys, is fairly indifferent to the clothes, and seems to think this is just like any other day. But with cupcakes. Cupcakes make any day 23x awesomer than other days- there have been studies on this.

I can't believe it was a year ago that the little man who is currently yelling at me from his crib because I'm "oppressing" him and, like, expecting him to nap and stuff was just this pink, sleepy little bundle of newness... it's been a good year, if a challenging one.

Love you, my Critter!

* and yes, by "saccharine" I mean fake sweetness that may cause cancer in lab rats. Thank you.