A guest post: Tristan’s 1st Birthday

Nolan is my husband and the father of our two children. He is an attorney and loves reading the newspaper, drinking coffee and watching baseball. He loves being a Dad. He’s a fantastic one, too. I asked him to write something for our son’s 1st birthday today.

Our baby boy, Tristan, (alias: Nay Nay) turns one today. We call him our “sweet guy” with reason: he really is the nicest little man you could imagine. He flashes his winning, four-tooth, bright-eyed smile with aplomb. He bobbles and bounces when there’s music on the radio. If you hold him and ask him to “lie down,” he’ll bury his little head into your chest. Lyrics from his little falsetto chirp and flutter through the house. He frolics with his big sister, Elise, and endures with grace her (loving) abuse. If I get home from work before his bedtime, he’ll spot me from across the house, throw that radiant smile, slap his way down the hall, and stop at my feet to look up expectantly. I think he likes me. The feeling is mutual.

Not that he’s been an “easy” child, if such a person exists. For the first several months, Tristan was uncomfortable after meals and had trouble keeping much down. I wondered whether he’d grow. And then there was the sleeping. For a while, he would only sleep in his mother’s arms, and then only in increments of a few hours at most. I felt helpless, hopeless almost daily. Whether by instinct or sheer force of will, Katie persevered.

Although Tristan still doesn’t particularly care for naps, he now sleeps soundly, reliably through the night. But he’s still an early bird. We took a vacation recently to Stone Lake, Wisconsin (which is a wonderful place, incidentally) and the latest he awoke during our week away was 6:00 a.m. One morning he was up at 4:45 and after he nursed I got up with him. We walked out on the pier, watched fish jump out of the water, listened to the lake and greeted the sun together.

I thought of a poem I’ve been reading to the children lately, In Time of Silver Rain, by Langston Hughes:

In time of silver rain
The earth
Puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
of life,
of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.

Happy first birthday with love, sweet guy.