Freddie Bear's first birthday

I'm not gonna lie to you.

Freddie's first birthday was hardly happy.

He's got a cold and two teeth tearing through his gums, and he's just about as miserable as a boy can be, which breaks my heart, both because he's so out of sorts and because, when he's out of sorts, I'M out of sorts, and Jones hasn't exactly been on his best behavior here lately, either, and poor (wonderful, patient) Jeremy bears the brunt of all our angst (I'm sorry, Sweetie. Thank you for being so wonderful. And, especially, patient).

In spite of Freddie's feeling bad, we tried to make things as merry as possible. The day began with a chocolate donut, picked out the nite before by his daddy and his big brother. I put a single candle on the donut, and the three of us sang to our tiny fourth. He, of course, had no idea what I meant by, "blow it out!"

All he knew is that the little flame in front of his face was absolutely fascinating, so immediately after I blew out the candle for him, he touched the wick and got hot wax on his finger. As if his day weren't already bad enough - what with the snot and the drool, and the eye teeth giving him fits ... he did, however, seem to enjoy the chocolate donut (because: DONUT), and then, he opened his presents.

And then we took him to have his first hair cut.

We took him to a guy who has cut the hair of every Pressley man back to Jeremy's great grandfather ("Daddy Robert"). Jeremy had wanted to take Jones to this guy, but my insistence that he have his first haircut on Main Street USA won out. Unwilling - and unable - to take Freddie to Disney World for his first birthday, I agreed with Jeremy that the Pisgah Barber Shop would be the most logical second choice.

I had envisioned that his first haircut would be a lot like Jones's. There'd be a sweet little snip and a spray of pixie dust and then the ceremonial lopping off the crazy curls that make our boy look a lot like Ed Wynn (my sister came up with the comparison, and I think it's a really good one). Where I thought "snip," however, our barber thought "shear." As in "with a razor." As in "like a sheep."

Poor little, miserable Freddie Bear went in looking like Ed Wynn and left with the business card of an Army recruiter who wondered when he'd be enlisting.

Bless his heart.

The rest of the day was pitifully unremarkable. In fact, I can't remember anything else - except that Freddie continued to be totally out of sorts, and I started wondering if he was "getting mean" like my Mayme always used to do after she'd had her haircut.

Anyway, here are some pictures - and the hope that tomorrow's birthday party will be a whole lot happier than the birthday itself was.