the baby turns one, we all turn 2022

The baby turns one next week—on New Year's Eve. I've been thinking about this as his birthday week, though, probably because I was in the hospital for so long prior to his arrival. It feels like his birthday should, at least for me, last several days. 

It's very strange to have a baby on New Year's Eve. The whole yearly retrospective gets tied up with the baby. I can't separate what happened in 2021 (most of it not so good) from the baby himself. And because I love him, it's hard to think that 2021 wasn't a good year. A good, exhausting, endless year. 

Having a baby really does induce a weird kind of brain fog. It's very hard for me to understand that the Capitol was invaded by a Trumpian mob this year—just 6 days after he was born. An attempt to steal the election very much seems like something I made up while sleep deprived and taking powerful narcotics. 

It's also very strange to me that covid has been happening for the baby's entire life—including the whole time I was pregnant. I can't even pretend to remember what I was thinking in March 2020 when I got pregnant. That seems so long ago, another lifetime on a different planet. When people talk about returning to normal I understand rationally what they mean, but it is clearly impossible. A world before covid, before the baby, before all this? What world is that? 

I've always hated New Year's Eve as a holiday. The mandate to go out and have fun or else has always repelled me—who can have fun when it's mandated? Of course I never appreciated it for what it really is, not a mandate to get drunk but the celebration of a new start. And now for the rest of my life New Year's Eve will always be about the baby, even many years from now when he's not a baby anymore and has no interest in celebrating his birthday with me. A wonderful way to fully neutralize a holiday I've never enjoyed.  

The baby himself is a delight at the moment. Crawling like a champ, working very hard to stand and take some steps. He loves so many things—the dog, the dog's toys, the swings, taking a bath, speaking gibberish, his teachers at daycare, food, going outside, his father. (Especially his father. I am of no interest currently.) He understands the word no and occasionally obeys when I tell him not to do something. And in turn he shakes his head vigorously from side to side when he doesn't want to do something. I'm sure he also understands the word yes, but we don't use that one very often. 

I'm sure he will be even more interesting (and annoying) next year. Here's to 2022.