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Last Wednesday night we had a staff Channukah party. It was hard to leave ND with her dad. I wanted to go to the party, but it was snowing out and I knew she would cry after I left.

I spent the first part of the evening opening conversations with people saying, "ND will be 1 tomorrow."

Then suddenly it hit me... a year ago at that time I was in labor.

Once I realized that, I began to feel very introverted, very powerful. I left the party shortly after. (I'd said hi to everyone I needed to by that point anyway.)

It's amazing to think how different I felt a year ago... that drowsy high-strung intense in-loveness. This year has been about so much worry and trying of things for the first time. There have been a lot of times when I thought I was feeling like myself, but in retrospect I was really quite dazed and overwhelmed both by awe and exhaustion.

It's a little different now. Our life is becoming one of routine in which we do things a certain way without too many surprises. She looks like a little girl already. And she's even oppositional. She likes to throw herself back in the high chair, hitting her head against the back, and I've been trying to get her to stop. This morning I took her down every time she did it and she would cry, not out of sadness but to actually tantrum a little. To "communicate" you might say.

"She's so advanced," we said. "She's already acting like a two year old."

And it's a little scary to think she might start to become so much more separate of a person, so much less willing to stay in sync with me, and vice versa.

Before, every want was a need. Now the two are starting to become different categories.

But no matter what, every morning I wake up and see her and it just starts again... this constant amazement of where our lives are now.

At that party someone said, "A.'s not at all happy about being a mom, is she?" and gave me a big smile.

(The pictures were all taken on her birthday. The first is of some tangerine I shared with her that morning. The other two are at day care when I picked her up later. We celebrated her birthday that night after lighting Channukah candles and again Saturday night after my parents arrived for a visit with us.)