The Squidling Turns One

Today is a Squidling post.

I have never really explained why I refer to my daughter as The Squidling, and now is as good of a time as ever: When she concentrates on something really hard, her hands and feet all start doing this crazy wavy thing, and she moves all of her fingers like tentacles. I haven't had any exclusively squiddy posts in a very long time, so I went to my blog archives and read through some of the stuff from 2009. Many of my '09 posts were about my pregnancy, and reading all that stuff totally brought it all back to me. Things like:


-The moment I knew I was pregnant. The next morning, I woke up to Sir Edmund the Hotness looking at me with the slightest smile on his face. Amazing feeling, that was. (And not at all stalker-creepy like it sounds, haha!)

-The random crying, followed by a three month period of absolute hell that was defined by saltines and Sprite. Funny morning sickness true story: when Joanna called me for the first time to offer representation, I was battling puking the whole time. I just could not bring myself to ask her to hold on, because holy-shit-a-freaking-New-York-City-literary-agent-IS-TALKING-TO-ME. The second I hung up with her, I sprinted past Eddie and promptly threw up in the bathroom. THEN I told him that I had just gotten an agent.

-The crazy ass, horrifying dreams that I seemed to have every. Single. Night.

-Finding out that I was going to be having a girl Squidling. We knew her name for a year before even getting pregnant: She would be our sweet Lily Mila.

-The incredibly bitchy hormonal random ramblings I posted on my blog.

-Being excited to balance pie on my preggo belly.

-The despair of getting "gestational diabetes" and having to STOP EATING CANDIES. *shudder*

-The super special memory of going to the hospital and finally meeting my perfect Squidling on Christmas Eve.

So since her birthday is on Christmas Eve, we had her party a few days early and she had a blast. (And ate LOTS of cake.) Today, she crawled over to the coffee table, saw something she wanted on it, and STOOD UP. As I type this, she is asleep in her own room, and we won't all be sharing a bed anymore. (She slept in her room for about a month or so when she was three or four months old, but then teething struck and we felt bad so she moved back in with us.) The fact that the transfer back to her room took only one try/night and she didn't even blink an eye makes me proud and sad at the same time.


And now as I'm looking at these old pictures, I'm crying. A lot. She was so tiny. One of my favorite memories is the first night we brought her home from the hospital and she looked too tiny in her big ass crib. We were afraid to bring her into our bed, because...*embarassed nod* we were just certain that our soft mattress wouldn't provide adequate support and she would inevitably die from SIDS if she slept on it. Hey, we were majorly sleep deprived already at that point. (Sleeping in the hospital was impossible for both of us.)



So...we slept on the futon in our living room. All crunched together. Eddie and I were both terrified of rolling over her so neither of us moved a muscle. In the morning, I found them like this:



God. I seriously can't even handle that picture.






Then she kept growing and growing, just like everybody promised. (Even though we didn't believe them.) We shot random ass YouTubes of her and took pictures on a daily basis.






























Even now, I know that one years old is still a tiny baby. But to me, it feels like she's sixteen. Which makes me wonder what I'll be thinking when she really is sixteen. I'll probably freak the fuck out then come to this blog to write about it and link this exact post.

So, Lily Mila Lukavics, I know that one day you are going to be old enough to read this, and when you do I hope you can tell that your Mama would burn the world down for you. I hope you can tell that you've brought the purest form of joy to mine and your Dad's life from the second we found out I was pregnant with you. I hope you can tell that we wanted you, that we tried for you, and that no matter what you are doing in life we will be there for you.

Here is my sweet Squidling enjoying her birthday cake:





And here is what a baby who has overdosed on cake looks like:





HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY!