an aussie in austria

My son just turned one.

My son… that still sounds odd to my ears. But there’s no denying there’s a little guy upstairs asleep right now!  

It’s a big milestone, they say. Well… yeah. It’s been a hell of a year. There’s some relief at hitting one year old. They say the first year is the hardest. Now we can drop the breast feeding if we want. Now he can eat table foods. Now he’s going to walk and talk and trade Bitcoin and drive a car…

Part of me wanted to make a big deal of it. The other part of me wanted to ignore it and just get through the day with hopefully no emotional breakdown. In the end it was somewhere in the middle… a BBQ… and a minor meltdown (me, not him). I’ll have to save the swimming pool cake for another year. Because there was no cake. There wasn’t even time to light a candle and sing happy birthday in amongst the excitement. In the end we did that the next day. We simply put a candle in a banana… Well… it is his favourite food, and technically putting a candle in a banana makes it a banana cake… right?

I didn’t buy him a present. He’s too young to understand and gets so much anyway. Instead, I thought about what to gift myself. For surviving. For the agony and delight of breastfeeding for an entire year. So when I saw a nice pair of earrings recently when I was out with Sam… I bought them. A little gift to me.

Little Sam is doing great. He loves his food and he loves to throw it on the floor and then stare down on it as if he is surprised. He loves to push his walker around giggling. He loves to push everything around giggling. He works very hard at being a baby (or should I say, toddler) from the second he’s awake until he goes to bed.

It’s still hard. There are still unexplained night wakings. Unexplained nap refusals. Tantrums at nappy changes, tantrums because he wants to go outside and it’s pouring with rain. But in general he’s a happy chap.

And now I’m back at work. I’m taking a break from being the primary carer. And honestly, it’s probably a good thing for us both!