today is my very first blogoversary. please help yourself to a virtual cupcake.

a year ago today, i waded – waddled, really, since i was 35 weeks pregnant and all out in front – into the blogosphere, and welcomed the world to the crib. the world didn’t particularly seem to notice…but i didn’t know any better, and babbled on blithely for months in a near-vacuum populated by a few faithful friends. the blog made me happy. i was writing for me, and for the baby-to-be who quickly became the baby (O came into the world only ten days after the blog was birthed) and who is now, relentlessly, becoming the boy. i was writing to mark myself down on the slipperiness of time, to keep track of and make sense of this journey of learning to parent in ways the baby books didn’t leave room for. i was afraid this first year would get lost…or i would…or both, if i did not write.

and in writing, and in time, i found more than i’d ever expected out here. a community, and laughter, and connection, and great, deep, proud relief in knowing that some of my words and thoughts don’t just spiral out into nothingness but actually take on lives of their own, out there, finding fertile ground in other living, breathing humans who then send back support and advice and new ideas. i have found friendship, of a kind. and a sense of accomplishment. and…most importantly, during a long, cold winter at home with an eternally teething baby…i have found that i am not alone. in my exhaustion, my battles with selfishness, my sarcastic and unmotherly thoughts, my grief, my quiet but profound awe and wonder at my child and at my love for him.

so now, i’m still writing for me, and for O, but not just as a record for the future or a lifeline to some reflective, contemplative version of self-hood. i’m writing to contribute to a conversation…and it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than just talking to myself.

it’s fitting that something that’s come to mean this much to me started in April. April, with crocuses peeking through the scarred earth. April, in which my children were born. April, which marks Finn’s death, and my Nan’s, and others less primary but no less rites of passage. April, when i first kissed Dave. all the big beginnings and endings of my life seem to have come in April…and to my surprise, one year in, the blog ends up having a place among these April milestones. April, bleak and barren-looking, naked, full of promise. yes, April is the cruellest month. but it has also brought the best and most beautiful things i have known…and the voice and community i have here among them.

it makes me happy, this crib. thanks for coming, and for reading, and for leaving your own mark on it in the passing. have a cupcake.