the other side of me

I took this picture of my fruit bowl today (it’s clearly ready to be replenished).

And it reminded me of another photo I had, of Baedyn after he got into the fruit bowl while I had my back turned, making dinner.

So my new camera has arrived. Along with it came some inspiration for my writing, so it’s best that I stop the long posts on times past for now and get back to work. It’s fitting that the last of the the “floppy” pictures I post is one of the last ones I took with the infamous Sony Mavica camera.

The summer of 2002, just a few months before B turned three, we took our first serious road trip. I - and I’m not sure how I convinced myself this was a good idea but I think I was high on the “indepedent divorcee” thing - packed up a used Jeep Cherokee that I’d just purchased to replace my 1974 VW Bug and drove from Tucson to Seattle, just me and an almost three year-old Mr. B.

The car over-heated the first day and blew some important pump, but we made it to Ridgecrest, California (the gateway to Death Valley, they say), where I luckily knew a mechanic who fixed my car at cost and got me back on the road. We made it to San Francisco, then Redding, then Portland, and then Seattle without incident (save one of my worst parenting moments in a parking lot in Portland).

We did a lot of great things in Seattle that year. My parents had just sold their house in the suburbs and moved into a fabulous condo downtown. We were walking distance to the market and the aquarium and Ivars and a short bus ride to the Seattle Center and other fun places. We even took a little trip to Snoqualmie Falls “The Island of Sodor” and met Thomas, Sir Top’em Hat, and others of Thomas’s friends. It was a fabulous time.

The last pictures, though, before I dropped the camera, were at the Woodland Park Zoo and this one has always been one of my favorites. I adore this kid and the picture captures many of the reasons he’s so special to me. How could you not love this guy?

Some of my favorite “firsts” follow.

Finding his thumb (little did I know, I’d rue the day years later when I had to get him to unfind it). January ‘00:

Learning to blow raspberries (which was much cuter when he wasn’t supposed to be eating). February ‘00:

Learning to crawl (and get into EVERYTHING). May ‘00:

And entirely too soon after that, he learned to walk. This has to be the source of the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for because it just might happen.” Life was never the same. June ‘00:

Four months after Baedyn was born, we moved from Rock Hill to Tucson. It was only late January and I wasn’t set to start graduate school until the fall, but we decided to get a head start and settle in long before that transition.

The move itself was rough. A snowstorm hit the week we left and made us continuously detour further and further south as we headed westward. I spent most of the ride sitting in the backseat of a 1997 Honda Civic with a carseat, a baby, and a staff. We arrived thinking it would be warm in Tucson (we were wrong) and had no heat or hot water for the first few nights. We had no furniture for the first week. You know those windows that the movers give? Well, for us, February 3rd-9th meant the ninth.

The first night we roughed it on the floor in sleeping bags. The second night we went to a hotel. On the third day we bought an air mattress. Sometime in those first few days we also bought the only other piece of “furniture” we would have until our things arrived - the Super Saucer. It was a life saver!

My midwife originally gave me a September 12th due date, but based on B’s growth at the 20 week ultrasound, she upped it to the 9th - 9/9/99 - saying they’d likely miscalculated.

The ninth of September rolled around, and then the twelfth. I was in agony and at my appointment on the 12th, I begged the midwife to induce me. She wouldn’t. She guessed that the baby was likely only 6 pounds, tops, and we’d give him a little more time to grow before he faced the world. Famous last words.

A week later, he was finally ready to make his grand entrance. My water broke in the middle of the night, more serious contractions started, and we were on our way to the hospital. With the water gone, it was easier for the midwife to gauge the baby’s size. Now she was guessing he was more like 8 pounds. Uh huh.

Twenty one hours later when I heard a nurse say, “We’ve got a linebacker here,” and another voice in the room start taking bets on if he was 11 or 12 or 13 pounds - I knew that he’d surpassed expectations.

Baedyn Elijah was born 9/19/99 at 12:45am weighing 9 pounds, 14 oz and 21 inches long, earning him the nickname - Ten Pound Brown.

Here he is at one week:

A lot of people ask about his name. We had four names picked out - a girl’s and a boy’s for each of us. Mine were Bayden Elijah and Julia Wisdom, Ben’s were Finnean Xavier and Alana Wren. We tossed coins. Ben got the girl, I got the boy. So when B was born, it was my call. But then, as we were filling out the birth certificate, we had a disagreement on how Baedyn should be spelled. Ben won that one.

Ever since I started here two years ago I’ve had the same desktop image - B being Marilyn Monroe. Today I decided to mix it up. I use the Cozi family scheduling tool and part of it’s very cool features is an automatically-generated, constantly changing, collage of photos and when one strikes you as particularly cool you can click “s” and send it to someone. So I sent myself this one and made it my desktop image:

I hope you have a smashing time in South Carolina. We’ll miss you, your smile, and your irresistible charm.

It’s been a busy weekend around here, but I haven’t documented it with pictures. B leaves tomorrow for some time with his dad and extended family in South Carolina and we’ve been stocking up on time together. Some of the things we’ve done - without my camera - have been:

A Mario Kart party:

A walk around St. Joseph lake on Notre Dame’s campus (we were hoping to rent a paddle boat, but they were closed):

And a Silverhawks game at The Cove on a beautiful spring day:  

He can hardly contain his excitement!