In which our little potato becomes a People

Well, it's happened. Our small child, The Hatchling, The Sprogling, Grasshopper, Player 3, Calvin (of the House Jewell, Slayer of Sleep, Destroyer of Avocados, the first of his name) has taken his first steps.


 
It is a reminder that the year anniversary since his birth is fast approaching. (When people say "they grow so fast" I suspect they mean "A year of my life passed so quickly, without me noticing, because I was paying attention to Someone Else" and honestly it sort of freaks me out that a year of my own life has slipped past with little accomplished except Keeping The Small Child From Dying, which is no small accomplishment, to be sure.




Our little person is now developing things that People like. He has preferences (bathtime splashtime, yay!) and acts on them (he crawls to the tub multiple times throughout the day and tries to climb into the dry and empty tub, good luck, buddy). He has a favorite book (Dragons Love Tacos, by Adam Rubin) and seeks it out, and carefully (and enthusiastically and imprecisely) turns the pages over and over and makes happy noises. (This book has also grown in thickness by about double, now, what with all the taped rips in the pages and binding.) He does not like shirts being pulled over his head, because they cover his eyes.

On that note, Liam and I have started planning Calvin's first birthday party. By "Calvin's" first birthday party, we mean "Our Party To Celebrate Surviving a Year as Parents, In Which The Small Child Also Survived and Thrived". Let's be honest, he won't really remember a party, and we are due for some fun with friends. He may end up with a cupcake of some sort. We will probably still have a pirate or dinosaur theme, but that's mostly because we like pirates and dinosaurs, and now that we have a child in the family we are more easily able to pretend that we are buying ridiculous things for him. We're uncertain if there will be an eyepatch dress code, but please plan accordingly.

Liam has just finished six months of on-the-job shadowing and training, where he learned the credit union's different job functions in-depth by practicing them three days a week on top of his normal job of trainer and putting together financial literacy fairs. It's been a long six months of unreliable schedules while we tried to arrange babycare coverage between our schedules, and long hours and heavy work loads, but it's over and he made lots of friends among his temporary co-workers, and he now has a very good overview of what his trainees need to learn when he brings in a new employee.


Elisabeth has had lots of exciting authors at her bookstore events, most recently two Newbery Honor winning authors in one week as she hosted Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted) and Katherine Applegate (The One and Only Ivan). Charles Simic (former Poet Laureate) also stopped in for a poetry reading in April, his second visit to Gibson's.