Beena Boo Turns ONE!

Beena Boo and Mommy getting in our birthday giggles.

This week Beena Boo turned one! Cliché, but it’s a milestone. At least for my husband and me. For BB, her birthday seems to be like any another day except with her parents trying to coax her into sitting still for a photo.

The first year was like learning to flying while being 10,000 feet up in a 737. It’s not possible to describe everything a parent learns in this experience. (Mainly, because the chronic sleep deprivation erases the majority of your memories.) Here are a few of the learnings that stayed with this mom from the first year of parenting:

• Have a clean diaper ready under your baby’s bum when you remove their dirty diaper lest you end up with pee all over your hands and shirt.
• My love for my daughter is unconditional. This unconditional love lives inside my daughter and me. It’s boundless.
• My daughter, even though I make her this often, is not my Higher Power. She is her own source of love, and I’m my own source. We delight in Love together and love for each other.
• Community is essential to surviving the first year with sanity and happiness. We were fortunate to have family, friends, care providers, and many mamas feed us, clean our home, care for BB, and give lots of advice. (Thank you for your support!)
• It’s all about cycles. Six hours of non-consecutive sleep for two months. Then three months of mostly 15 hours of sleep, 12 of which is consecutive.
• In a non-sleeping cycle, when you loose your mind, what’s left is unfettered creativity.
• Babies understand everything.
• Babies are born with their own personalities. Having taught leadership psychology for a few years, and having been in over a decade of therapy myself, I’d come to believe that primary caregivers’ actions and attitudes towards their children in years 0–5 affects children’s personality development more than a child’s nature (e.g., neurochemistry and genetics). HAHAHAHAHA! Beena Boo emerged a vibrant, fierce, independent, and loving being. She embodies these personality traits, irrespective of what we do, say, etc. . .
• On that note. . . my parents did the best that they could in raising me. The fire of child birth and parenting transformed this from an intellectual platitude to a real knowing.
• Children are programmed to stick their fingers into electrical sockets and chew on cables. Also, to stick their fingers into the fireplace and lick ash remnants off of them. Baby-proofing is a must.
• You can be more frustrated and more in love with your partner, both than ever and simultaneously.
• Baby belly kisses are the best!