Happy First Birthday Nolan!

One year ago yesterday, I pushed a nearly 7 pound little human out of my body and just like that Nolan was born!

I guess I made that sound way too easy, and it’s somewhat true what they say – our brains and bodies are designed to forget pain. I can’t remember the pain itself but I made sure to make a mental note to myself and log it in my memory as the most painful experience of my life. I was never any good at rating my pain on a scale of 1 to 10 but when I was in labor and Nolan was in the wrong position pushing directly on my spine I felt like my pain was at a 15. I kept clinging onto the thought that this pain is only temporary and in a few hours it will be over and we will get to meet our little guy. I kept asking my nurse how much longer it will take and she kept telling me that she doesn’t know, it could take days – not very helpful! But it was a very quick labor after all, which I’m thankful for. The pushing part was actually less painful than the back-labor, maybe because I was hopped up on adrenaline and knew I would get to meet Nolan shortly. The funniest part of it all was when the nurse asked Deon if he wanted to take a look and he promptly said “no thank you” but then he took a little peep and said “it looks like you are pushing out an alien”.

From the moment he was born, he was looking around squinting, taking in the world outside his cozy little womb that nurtured him for 9 months.

Deon and I were instantly in love, we just kept staring at him in awe of the fact that we created a little human. He was just perfect!

We called him an ‘angel baby’ because he was really easy. He nursed and he pooped and he looked around and he slept. I took his newborn pictures when he was 9 days old and he slept through the entire thing.

He barely ever cried. For the first month.

Then overnight it was like someone switched out our angel baby and left us with a crying machine who could not settle and could not sleep. We wore him in a wrap pretty much 24/7 because that’s the only way he was happy. We did whatever worked to make him stop crying and get him to sleep. But we were creating awful sleep crutches and after 4 months of holding him in our arms all day and night, we were exhausted. Parents need sleep too! So we called Bemama (my mom) for help and she taught Nolan how to fall asleep in his crib and it was wonderful! But I would like to add that Nolan never became a great sleeper. He STILL wakes up at night, but it’s OK, I cherish these early morning cuddles.

It’s been a tough, exhausting, but wonderful journey watching Nolan grow and learn this past year.

He loves reading books and is starting to read on his own, flipping through pages saying “ba ba da ba da”. He loves inspecting moving parts like wheels. He absolutely loves anything that’s metal – spoons, screws, keys, and anything and everything else. And most of all, he loves people. He goes up to anyone and everyone at the playground and starts ‘chatting’. He also knows when he is being a ‘bad boy’ because when I say his name he looks up and crawls away really fast giggling. He developed a bad habit of biting us (really hard!) and then laughing maniacally and it’s super hard to keep  a straight face and tell him ‘no’ because he is just so darn adorable. I’m hoping he won’t be that kid in kindergarten who bites the other kids..! We better teach him some manners.

I wanted to do a smash cake session with him for his birthday and my mom baked him a beautiful swirly cake.

He put his hands in it right away but then the next minute he crawled off and didn’t really want to go near the cake anymore. My mom put a little bit of frosting in his mouth and he started gagging! I guess it was way way way too sweet. We tried to get a few more shots of him with the cake but he broke down crying. It’s alright though, we managed to get a couple of great shots!

Happy 1st Birthday My Little Man! I love you more than words can describe.


Hello there! Let me introduce myself

Hello friends, family, and all the new faces here! I’ve been doing some research on marketing and apparently writing a blog is a thing so here I am, I’m a blogger now! I promise I will try to make each and every post unique in some way and try to stay away from posting photos from every session with the description “I had so much fun working with family X, the kids were absolutely adorable”, because while it’s true, I do really enjoy my job and I haven’t met a kid who wasn’t adorable – the blog posts would get pretty boring pretty fast.

Here’s 3 random things about me:

  1.  I wanted to be a ‘garbage man’ when I was 5 so I could ride on the back of the garbage truck.
  2.  I can make a ‘flower’ by folding my tongue.
  3. I built a giant human-sized nest on top of a tree for an art project in University.

Now I’ll properly introduce myself.

My name is Reka, it’s a Hungarian name meaning ‘river’, though some Indian friends have told me that it’s also a common name in India (who knew!). I have 3 siblings and I’m the second oldest. I was born and raised in Hungary and moved to Canada with my family when I was 14. For the first year, pretty much the only phrase I said to my classmates was “sorry, I don’t speak English”. I never imagined that one day speaking English would be easier than speaking Hungarian. I never imagined that I would speak English to my husband and it would be so hard to teach my son my native language. Let’s back up a bit though, I’m getting ahead of myself!

My husband and I are high-school sweethearts!

Deon and I met in 11th grade physics class where he caught my eye and I asked him to be my lab partner. We had a friendly competition going on, incited by our teacher. I’m going to keep you all wondering who won in the end. You are all probably thinking I’m crazy because I moved across the country to follow some guy when we graduated high school. We went to University together, where he studied Computer Science and Math and I studied Fine Arts and Psychology. We grew up and became ‘real adults’ together. We got married on July 13th, in 2013. It’s almost been 5 years! We welcomed a new addition – little baby Nolan – to our family on June 24th, last year. Tomorrow is his first birthday so he deserves his very own blog post.

 

That’s it for now! Comment below, or PM me directly, to tell me what sort of blog posts you would like to read.

And now I’m off to take photos of Nolan’s best baby friend, Xander, at his first birthday party!