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| Williamsburg, 2013 |
Last night, I barely kept my eyes open long enough to see the ball drop in Times Square (on our TV, clearly.) 2013 has been a jam-packed, wonderful year. Although Axel was born in 2012, in 2013 it really felt like we became parents, somehow. Maybe because the newborn days are such a blurry, happy shock to the system...it only really started to sink in this past year.
Here's a look back at some of the moments that I'll remember most.
In January, Axel turned five months old and we rang in the New Year in England. We were a little bedraggled from so much travel, but we had a good time exploring London and seeing family.
We came home to blue skies and a lot of work. It was good to get back into a routine, but February and March were challenging months. Axel had an MRI for the cyst on the back of his head. I worked (and pumped) almost constantly, and it felt like I had to steal every minute I could with him in the early mornings and evenings. I spent a lot of time wondering if working with a young baby was worth it, and feeling torn in a million directions. Axel was sick on and off from Christmas through mid-March, and it often felt like a grind, especially the weeks leading up to his surgery and during his recovery. We sort of held our breath through Easter, when it felt like the clouds had truly lifted.
In April we took a lot of long walks around Brooklyn and started to grapple with an increasingly mobile eight month old. Suddenly I understood why mothers of older children described the first six months or so as "easy." I got into more of a groove at work and made peace (ish) with my work-life balance, and we made it to Maine several times over the spring.
In June, I found out I was expecting baby number two and we took our first big solo trip as a family of three (and a half), to France for our friends' son's christening.
