Sunday, June 06, 2010

my baby is 1



wow, that went fast. when i posted his birthday as my status on FB, about 75% of the comments said, "i can't believe he's already one!" yeah, no kidding. the night before his birthday, i re-read his birth story because even though it is very clearly imprinted in my brain, this mama needs some reminders of a few details like, um, the time of day he was born. (seriously, i couldn't remember what time he was born, though i knew it was in the afternoon sometime.) i felt all nostalgic reading about the whole experience, remembering the thrill and relief i felt to see him completely whole and unharmed.

we are part of a vast minority who don't do big First Birthday Parties. i know that they are super popular, and perhaps i would be more inclined to join pretty much everyone we know in throwing our 1 year old a huge party if i was the party throwing type. i hate throwing parties. i don't mind attending them, but thinking about planning a party makes me feel slightly nauseous. so we did the same thing we did for tristan's first birthday (and the same thing we did for his 2nd and 3rd birthdays, come to think of it)....we invited the grandparents and gramps and i made a bunch of cupcakes and the baby opened a few gifts and that was that! it was a super hot day out, so josh filled up the plastic kiddie pools and the boys had a great time splashing around in them after the cake.



oh yes, the cake. i was informed by a friend that our local grocery store gives out a free mini cake for baby's first birthdays. um, free? yes thank you, i'll take one of those. i knew that the store cake probably wouldn't taste that great, so i figured we'd let samuel go to town on that one and then i'd make cupcakes for the rest of us. well, first of all the free "mini" cake turned out to be a decent sized round cake with gobs of blue and green frosting that were so full of food coloring they almost looked luminescent. the frosting was the part that samuel ate the most of and not only did he gag on it while eating it, he had a tummy ache that night and kept pooping green all day today. nice. so yeah, i wouldn't recommend going that route for a kid who basically has had no sugar his entire life.

josh and i had a brilliant plan when it came to present time. we knew how eager tristan was to "help" his younger brother open his gifts, which basically meant that tristan was going to tear apart the paper before samuel even knew what was going on. so we decided to give tristan our old camera to use that day and we gave him the job of documenting his brother's first birthday. he took his job so seriously that he completely filled up the memory card with blurry shots of his feet, people without heads, the carpet up close and he even got few really decent ones. it definitely kept him out of the way of samuel, who was free to eat his wrapping paper and ignore the actual gifts inside. the following is a tristan picture...i thought it looked quite festive.




so, we survived another child's first year of life. josh and i gave each other congratulatory high-five's last night. and then he said, "so are we ready for number 3?" which completely ruined the moment for me. (no, none of that last part actually happened. it just sounded like a good ending for the post)

9 comments:

kelly ens said...

i think that is a perfect way to celebrate a birthday, and your means to distract Tristan sound PERFECT :)
happy birthday again to little Samuel!

Neha said...

Sad that he fell sick after having the cake...but yes, a good job given to Tristan...am sure he enjoyed it thoroughly...and many congratulations on Samuel's first birthday. Post some pictures of the birthday boy with his older brother too :)

rachel joy said...

I'm all about the low-key birthdays. It just so happened that we were in youth ministry for the 1st b-days of the oldest boys, so those were great with lots of people. Max had a big birthday for #4, but all the rest for all of them have just been a few people gathering to celebrate.

Clever parenting to keep Tristan feeling special, too. :)

Shannon said...

I am so low key it is almost pathetic.

For Brianna's second birthday I have a picture of her blowing out candles on a piece of cake. It is actually a corner cut from Bradleys leftowver baby shower cake. We sang, she was happy, she got cake. All was well in the world.

Anonymous said...

Happy Belated Birthday, Samuel!

-your runner-up cousin, Kaiser

Bonnie said...

Looked like a great party. Happy belated birthday, Samuel.

Jennifer said...

I took 'high five' as something cryptic...something a little more proactive towards actually achieving a third child. *nugde nugde wink wink*

Covnitkepr1 said...

"Nothing but Blue Sky"...Maybe just at least one white cloud. He's comiong back in the clouds, just as He left.
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Thoughts on Life and Millinery. said...

So what was served at Josh's and Gramp's June birthday parties? I hope they had fun with their cakes too!