A few years ago, on our road trip, we discovered the beauty of stopping at hidden beaches, tiny swimming spots known only to locals. We swam in tiny Minnesota lakes, Canadian cave lagoons, and upstate New York waterfalls. We haven’t done much of that kind of thing since Ezra was born, and so we decided to find us some swimming holes during our Wisconsin/Minnesota vacation last week.

On the first day, we stopped at Whitewater Lake in Wisconsin, a postage stamp of a strip of sand. The waiter at the restaurant where we asked for directions wondered what we had against the larger, more developed Lake Geneva, and we couldn’t really answer, just knew we’d prefer to stop somewhere small and hidden away. While Sandy floated away on an innertube, Ezra and I dug holes in the sand, and were entertained by an eight-year-old girl doing magic tricks (“See all this sand in my hand? Now I’ll just put my hand under the water and….it’s gone!”)

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After a mini Wandering Weiszes style road trip through Wisconsin, we arrived on Thursday in Northfield, Minnesota, home of our friends Dan, Emily, and Ellie.

Northfield is not strengthening my case against Sandy’s not-so-secret desire to move out of the big city and into a smaller town in the upper midwest.

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Dear Ezra,

A year. A whole year!

One year ago, I woke up, as I had for weeks, heavy and uncomfortable. It had finally gotten hot after a cold spring, and your dad suggested we go to the pool to cool off. I waddled there slowly on swollen feet, and then I lowered myself into the cool water and you and I floated together for a while, turning and rolling and kicking.

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For weeks I’ve been wondering about Ezra’s first words. He sort of says Mama, but only as a long, pitiful wail when he’s really upset. He was working on Daddy for a few days, but didn’t really use it to call out to or refer to his Daddy.

Then, a few days ago, I noticed a funny thing he was doing. He started to say “no,” while shaking his head. So I countered with an emphatic “yes,” while nodding, and he mimicked me (though his version is more of a “yeh”). We went back and forth all day, practicing Yeses and Nos. He started playing a hilarious kind of duck-duck-goose variant with us, faking us out with, “Yeh, yeh, yeh, yyyyyyyyy —- NO.”

In hindsight, I should perhaps have shut this down, rather than abetting it, because, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ezra has his first word, and it is NO.

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This week has been one of the hardest I’ve had as a mom. Ezra is teething, and I think this time it’s one of his molars. He’s in a lot of pain, and is, for the first time basically ever, inconsolable. The other night, after a month of sleeping through the night, he cried for over an hour, despite me going in to nurse him over and over again.

All his favorite foods have taken turns making him furious. He has eyes only for rice cakes. Delicious, vitamin-free rice cakes. Meanwhile, he’s developed a biting habit, nipping me hard on my shoulders, neck, collarbone, even my legs. I’m starting to be careful about how I embrace my little hugger, wondering when the teeth will sink in.

Last night, after another rough bedtime, complete with Ezra refusing to nurse, crying through his bedtime story, and then demanding angrily to nurse as if I hadn’t just offered, I burst into tears and wailed to Sandy about how terrible everything had become.

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