With a little help from Andy, I’ve managed to assemble a workstation that allows me to type (with TWO hands) while holding the tiny pterydactyl. This is a very good thing because, for the most part, he is not happy unless he is reclining on his favorite piece of furniture — me.

Today is his one month birthday, and I want to keep up the tradition we had with Anya of posting a photo and list of tricks learned each month for the first year or so. However, I haven’t taken that picture yet, so you’ll have to wait until at least tomorrow. Or perhaps February. Another reason for not posting the 1 month post yet is because it feels weird to me to write about month one before I write about day one. I’m really big on the chronology.

One thing I’m not really big on is writing a birth story about the pain and the mess and the pushing and the screaming and all that, so I’m not going to. Here’s my story: We went to the hospital, the medical people did medically stuff, a baby appeared, and I ate lime sherbert.

Okay, so you want a few more details than that? He…

– weighed 8 lbs, 14 ounces,
– stretched 21.5 inches long/tall,
– arrived tangled up in umbilical cord and with a hand/arm up by his face,
– had a decent amount of hair, realllllllly long fingers, and freaky vampirically long fingernails and toenails,
– came with a red birthmark on his forehead (which the nurse baby nurse swore would fade — how does she know?),
– and was pimplier-faced than the pimpliest-faced teenager.

Do you notice yet how I am avoiding using a name for the wee one? See, here’s the problem. When you call a person by a name for seven or so months, it’s really, really, really tough to suddenly start calling him by a totally different name. Mostly we are still calling him Bouncy (his pre-birth nickname), but I tend to introduce him to new people as Konstantin (his formal name — which one should use for introductions). Occasionally I call him Kostya (his post-birth nickname), and eventually I will say it and hear it enough times that it begins to feel more normal than Bouncy. Hopefully this will happen before he is a teenager.