Happy one year birthday, Emily.

What amazingly mixed feelings. Though it’s been said before, that doesn’t make it any less true: time goes by so quickly! Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was getting by working part-time as an actor and playing volleyball three nights a week while Jan was teaching English to kindergarteners and getting sauced every Friday night? Yet, at the same time, I look at photos of Emily from when she was six months old and it seems like a lifetime has passed since then. We love watching her grow and change but we also know that once her crawling stage has passed (and it already has), it’s gone forever. Bitter sweet.

Emily spent most of her time since her 11 month birthday traveling around the United States of America. The plan was to start off with a whirlwind tour of New York City, taking dramatic photos of our Little Girl in front of the Statue of Liberty, casually walking through Central Park, riding the subway, and buried up to her eyebrows in stuffed animals at FAO Schwartz. But we got sick. So we spent a wonderfully relaxing week by the pool at cousin Cookie and Mike’s house in Chappaqua. They were so generous and accommodating, I cannot thank them enough. Next, we went up to cousin Susie’s house in Potsdam for her surprise 60th birthday party. Unfortunately, my mom couldn’t make the trip (we missed you, mom), but millions of other family members did. That was a blast. I was well within my death-by-family-overload threshold. So many relatives had never met Emily before! I hope she didn’t steal all my cousin’s limelight. Then we headed out west to California for 10 days with my Aunt Amy and my Nana (now to be affectionately called “GG” – for Great Grandmother). More swimming pools and dinner parties and day trips and doggies and lovely times spent with family. Amy and GG volunteered to play with Emily every morning, allowing Jan and me to get a couple of extra hours of much needed sleep. They were so amazing to us, we didn’t want to leave – but we had to. August was ending and Barcelona was calling. A 14 hour plane ride from LA to Barcelona via Amsterdam was easily tackled thanks to a very thoughtful Emily sleeping 60% of the trip. Thank God.

So we’re home now, almost completely recovered from the massive nine-timezone jetlag we have been suffering this week. And today, Emily turned one year old. Here’s what she’s been up to:

• At last month’s count, Emily had seven teeth. Geez, imagine suffering through seven teeth ripping their way through your tender gums over the course of only a few months. OK, now imagine getting five more teeth in under 30 days! Yup, we’re up to 12 (and back to an even number, I’m happy to say).
• I shudder to think what this girl’s future phone bills will be like. Emily loves telephones. In the past, and without knowing why, she would yearn to pick up and hold each and every phone in her immediate vicinity. She would dial some numbers, hand you the phone so you could speak with the nonexistent person on the other end, but then she would take it back and just smile. Now, Emily likes to walk around the house talking on the phone, too. I think she calls China because I often hear her saying “Wing nyong wing nyong wing nyong”. I’d better teach her how to use Skype if I want to save on long distance calls.
• Emily has developed quite the powerful throwing arm. She mostly uses her newfound ability for evil: throwing toys across the room. food against the wall, shoes in the garbage, or clothing in the toilet. But occasionally, she enjoys the off game of catch. Thank goodness Amy’s dog, Sadie, was up to the challenge. Emily would throw the ball and, much to Emily’s delight, Sadie would catch the ball and gently roll it back to her. This would go on for days, sometimes weeks, until either Sadie would get fed up with Emily’s little girl throws and bring the ball to someone else or Emily would get distracted by random objects – like a small branch, for instance – and prematurely end the game.
• I hear that you can’t bring baby baths with you on trans-Atlantic flights. Something about terrorists and “bath bombs”. I don’t know. So Emily was forced to endure three weeks of showers and big girl baths in the US. It seemed a little ridiculous to go back to the tiny baby bath when we got home, so Emily now takes her nightly bath using the entire bathtub. And she’s absolutely loving it. I just wish she would sit down and let me get to business instead of standing up, walking all over the place, and dancing till she slips and falls. That kid’s got a death wish, I tell you.
• We’re still not forming full, grammatically correct sentences, but after hearing us sing Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Emily likes to join in with “e-GO-e-GO-e-GO”. Just one of her very cute tricks. She also claps her hands when she’s happy and she knows it, she “open shuts them” on command, performs random headstands to please the house guests (after which, we all have to yell “upside down Emily!”), can selectively point to any one of six different animals (including “mommy” and “daddy”), and finds nothing more amusing than holding her nose and impersonating telephone operators by saying “mamamama” and then proudly smiling to herself.
• Emily’s hard independent shell is thankfully starting to crack. Don’t get me wrong: I love the fact that she can play on her own while we get things done around the house. But now, she not only lets us hold her hand while she’s walking (sometimes), but her list of needs that send her flying into our arms has expanded from just “hungry, tired, and in pain” to include “want to snuggle”. So nice
• Jan’s mom says that, at one year old, she was running around the playground and climbing things like a little daredevil, making older kids hurt themselves by trying to keep up. Well, Emily is definitely her mommy’s little girl. Last week, Emily climbed up the small set of stairs at the playground and went down the slide all by herself. Head first! Thank goodness we have socialized medicine.
• I really thought the whole “learning to walk” thing would be more of a process and not such a night-and-day transformation. I had expected Emily to trip over her own feet for at least a few months. But after only taking her first steps about six weeks ago, she is already running! I’m not giving any points for style here, but when it comes to pure velocity, we sometimes verge on breaking a sweat when it comes time to chase her down after a playground session. She knows that it’s time to go and she isn’t ready yet. I think we’ll move on to forward rolls before we attempt our first cartwheel.

Royal flush. I win!

Nice to see you at my party.

And finally, to commemorate the momentous occasion, I offer you a splendiferous collection of amazingly lifelike Emily photos from the past few months, in awe-inspiring high resolution, assembled into my newest (and arguably cutest) Flickr set:

Click here to see a slide show of the new photos.

Click here to view the photos in their natural habitat on my Flickr page.