Your Baby's First Year of Life - Week 52

The second you find out you're pregnant you sign up for these weekly updates from online magazines and mommy sites so you can monitor all those tiny developments like getting eyelashes and having identifiable private parts, all the while devouring your What to Expect book that lives on your nightstand.

Then, eventually, you have the baby and you move on to the second volume of What to Expect, which keeps your attention for maybe the first 6 weeks when you discard the seemingly common-sense advice. But, the emails, they keep coming. Who has time to unsubscribe with a 6-week-old to take care of? Mostly you skim them now, not following the links from the teasers to the more in-depth content. Then one day you get the one called "Your Baby's First Year of Life - Week 52." Week 52? What? How can that be?

It's true, though, this week is Oliver's 52nd week. The little diablo will be uno en January 8. (Sorry for the Spanglish, I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on vacation where the two languages were commonly interchanged.)

We aren't going to do too much for his big day. Just a family dinner on the Thursday, then a pizza with family and a few friends on Sunday. Oliver is hoping to take his Stroller Strides girlfriends out to lunch next week, too, but all-in-all it should be a quiet one. (Well, I guess three events isn't exactly "quiet" but in the whole Elmo-and-Dora scheme of things, pizza is quiet.)

And quiet is good.

We just got back from a very active vacation -- a 10-night Eastern Carribean Cruise! It was great to spend a lot of individual and extended family time (but more on all of our adventures at sea later when I get the hundreds of Oliver photos downloaded from our camera).

Also on the docket for blog later (blater?) is some sort of Year in Review effort. I've been thinking that I should try to do a little catch-up on the blog since I didn't start until September and he had 8-9 months of life prior that went entirely without commentary. The audacity!

So, visit often, comment more, and have a happy new year!