Easter, March 23, 2010

Devon celebrated his second Easter on Sunday, the only major holiday that we will celebrate twice with only one child. Last Thanksgiving Devon was crawling and I was a few weeks pregnant with the twins. At Devon's first Christmas we were still in shock from the pregnancy test I had taken three days earlier, thinking in awe that we will have two consecutive first Christmases. We were joking with family that we could keep up the rhythm, get pregnant again when #2 is eight months old, and have #3 as a Christmas 2012 baby for a third consecutive first Christmas. Of course, now that we know that we're getting #2 and #3 as a package deal, it's even funnier in retrospect. We’ve been advised that we have a 40% chance of another multiple pregnancy, so now the number of children we could manage to produce in three years increases to 6.



Devon was six days old on his first Easter, lying on the blanket and looking tiny. That didn’t stop Grammy from giving him an Easter basket, vintage from my childhood and filled with toys old and new. Since the basket went into the closet intact, this year’s Easter basket was a snap. I found last year’s in the attic, transferred the toys to a new basket, and this time Devon enjoyed rooting around in the basket.



Sunday Devon also debuted his Big Boy Shoes. He’s worn Robeez, the wonderful pre-walker soft leather slippers, until now. Friday I decided that the unusually dapper vest-and-golf-short combo passed to him from a friend’s son needed real shoes. On the changing table, he tried to bite the new sandals off, which is probably what Ally kitty would do if we tried to get her to wear shoes. On the ground, he lifted a foot WAY up in the air, eyed the shoe distastefully, and then smacked it down as if trying to shake it off. For you Nick Park fans, it was a motion that can only be compared to Wallace in The Wrong Trousers. Thankfully, Daddy was able to convince Devon that Big Boy shoes weren’t that much harder to wear and made a pleasing clomp every time he took a step, so the transition was over in ten minutes. When he woke up from his nap, he found his Big Boy Shoes and brought them to me to put on again. Here’s a better side view of Devon and the B.B.S., as he plays with his Little People Circus, a birthday gift from Grammy and Grandpa.



We took about twenty pictures of Devon in his outfit and with his basket, but only a few turned out. Sadly, the best one of him also features me in the back goggling like a startled deer.



Craig is a great photographer and always gets his camera out to capture a cute shot of Devon. Sadly, even the most careful parent must do battle with what I call The Immutable Laws of Juvenile Photography:

1. No matter how many snaps you take, only three will turn out. Usually the first three.
2. In those three, parents have a weird facial expression, a body part accidentally exposed, or an awkward posture that reveals post-baby lack of physical conditioning.
3. The child will be so cute that the shot will still go in the baby book, the mailing, or the slideshow. Parents will either be totally oblivious to looking bad, or call attention to it in a "tee-hee" sort of way.

Take one of our first Devon-and-Mommy pics, for example.



I thought this was an adorable shot of both of us. I included it in Devon's email birth announcement and copied it for the baby book. Then, when I returned to teaching on finals week, one of my students pointed out that the dopey smile on my face was not new motherhood. I was well and truly stoned, complete with pupils dilated to cover my entire iris. Whether it was the previous days epidural (I'm a big girl, so my dose of anesthetic could fell a stampeding bull elephant) or the Percoset I had taken at five that morning, I was definitely feeling no pain. Yet, I'm still showing off this photo. Tee-hee.