On June 1st (Ofelia’s first birthday) she took her first micro-steps, ones that only a proud father could count as steps. We kept the cameras out and ready to shoot in anticipation of Ofelia’s first real steps. That day came on June 17th! Since then she has been working hard on her traveling skills. Every day she gains in agility and speed, luckily those gains are gradual enough that I can still keep up with her!
We’ve been busy here with guests, but we’ll post that later…
It’s been a year! I’ve spent the last few weeks remembering a year ago when we didn’t know Ofelia yet, when I was lumbering around Philadelphia and cleaning every nook and cranny of our apartment in the name of nesting, when living in Paraguay as a family of three was a distant possibility (and a sometimes cause of middle-of-the-night worry). We have come so far… literally and figuratively. And last Sunday when I brought out Ofelia’s ugly, but very tasty, birthday cake with whipped-cream frosting and a scrounged-up candle (usually used for power outages), my heart filled with pride. I am so proud of making it through the first year of parenthood, of what our little threesome has become in this time, of what we have become for each other in living thousands of miles from everything familiar, of the father that Weylin is, of all that Ofelia has learned to do, adapted to, forgiven us for (at least we don’t see obvious signs of a grudge…), of the little person she has become so far. I guess this is what parents do, they get proud. Indeed, I am–proud of Ofelia and, damn, I’m proud of her parents, too. Here are some pictures of her birthday and a few days before and after. And a couple thrown in from the day after she was born last year… just to measure our progress.
Thanks for joining us in our Process. We're back from the beyond and settling into Cleveland, 2 PhD efforts, a new house, and 1.5 children-- no boredom here! Our foreign adventure has passed but "domestic" adventures are emerging. Stay tuned for anecdotes and updates.
Trust the Process.