Birthday Celebrations

Since Kaeden's birthday was on a Wednesday this year, his birthday celebrations ended up being spread out across many days.

For his birthday morning, I made him a special breakfast of french toast (with syrup!) - he was a fan :)

One of Mason & Ryan's favorite treats is to go out to frozen yogurt, and poor Kaeden would often tag along and be deprived. So, since we had no other plans for his actual birthday, we decided to take him to frozen yogurt and let him try it himself!

He didn't like it all that much - I think the cold kind of bothered him, but the rest of us enjoyed his little birthday celebration :)

After my parents arrived on Friday, we decided to do presents. Ryan was (not surprisingly) more excited than Kaeden, but Kaeden definitely enjoyed his new toys and even figured out the whole unwrapping thing a little bit as time went on.

Practicing his standing/walking

Learning to open :)

Clothes may not be that exciting to a one-year-old, but some day he will appreciate the AWESOME owl sweater that his Nana knit for him!

Playing with his new music toy - probably the biggest hit of the night.

This was another of his favorite new toys: a walker! As you can see, he was pretty enthusiastic about it.

Saturday was Kaeden's party. I was very thankful to have my parents there to help with preparations. Even Ryan helped to get our "owl s'mores" ready for the party and he had a lot of fun doing it too!

I have known since he was just a few months old that I would have an owl party for Kaeden. His favorite toy as an infant was an owl and when he started to coo, his most common sound was "whoo whoo". I was excited to find some really cute party supplies and decided to model the cake after them. I was really pleased at how it turned out.

Kaeden's favorite part was, by far, the balloons. Ever since, every time he sees a balloon, he points at it and goes, "ooooo". He loves 'em!

The older kids were definitely excited about cake time:

The sequence of events:

I think he liked it!

Happy, happy birthday to my big one year old!

One year old

Dear Kaeden,

Happy Birthday!


Okay, so I'm a little late, but we were too busy celebrating for me to get the portraits/blogging done on time. More to come on that soon...

You've had a wild month. I feel like something about you changes every single day. The most significant is that you've started walking some. It's been very gradual, but over the course of the month, you've gone from 1-2 steps at a time to occasionally walking across a room. You still fall on your bottom plenty, but you're doing great and you're very proud of yourself. If you get any recognition at all, you stop what you're doing and clap.


This month, you had your first sleepover with cousin Atticus. He got to stay at our house, and you were so thrilled. You still love him and he's still wary of you, but don't worry - he'll come around eventually. He's quite happy playing next to you, though... just not with you yet!

We also tried out the car-full of cousins and you all seemed to get a kick out of being back there all together:
You have a new cousin now too! Her name is Gwen and you'll meet her in a few weeks. She's pretty cute, so I think you'll like her. In fact, you have a bit of an obsession with babies right now, so I'm afraid you might like her a little bit too much. You don't really understand "gentle touches" quite yet, so you may have to watch her from a distance.

You have also been in a serious daddy phase. You've had a strong mommy preference for most of your life, so it's been really sweet and a lot of fun to see you clinging to your daddy. It's not always so fun when you scream in the mornings when he leaves for work, but it's worth it :)


You painted for the first time this month. You were super focused & into it at first, but you lost interest pretty quickly.


Some other skills you've been working on are clapping, waving, pointing, and blowing kisses. You are a very social little guy, which is a new thing for your daddy & I to get used to. On the plane ride up to Nana & Papa's this month, you entertained people all around us for most of the flight with your smiles and waves. It was great for me too because it kept you entertained!


At your one year check-up, you weighed in at 21 lb 13 oz and you were 29.5 inches long, both of which are right around the 50th percentile. You grew 2 inches in 3 months!! I have definitely noticed that you are thinning out some and getting longer - makes you look like a big boy. You also got another tooth this month, so you're up to 5 now. Oh, and you are officially done nursing. I cut out your last feeding this past week and you have hardly noticed, so it's been great. Unfortunately, you don't like cow's milk at all yet, but we're working on getting you used to it. In the meantime, you get lots of yogurt, and milk and cheese mixed in with things. You continue to be more and more picky, which is a bit frustrating. You are now fighting veggies too, but you'll let me spoon feed them to you still as long as you have other food at the same time.


You are definitely starting to transition to one nap. If you sleep well in the morning, you will often skip your afternoon nap these days, which makes for long afternoons! Once I get more of a commitment out of you, I'll start pushing back your morning nap so that you can hopefully have one longer mid-day nap. We'll see.

I guess that pretty much wraps it up. We made a trip over to Duke Gardens for your one year pictures and I LOVE them.

Happy birthday once again to my child of many expressions. Mommy loves you!

What a difference a year makes...

One year ago, I had the most amazing birth experience I could have hoped for and met my little angel Kaeden for the first time. It was one of the very best days of my life.

He fills my days with happiness and I could not be more proud to be his mommy.

Happy Birthday, little one.

Halloween

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. That's kind of funny coming from someone who has a candy addiction and loves little kids... especially cute little kids dressed up as cute little things. It's all the not-so-cute dressing up and too-old trick-or-treaters and scary stuff that I'm not so much a fan of. Thankfully, with two rather small children of my own, it's easy right now to focus on the good parts.

We have a Halloween party tradition in our play group and I look forward to it every year to see those kiddos all dressed up.

This year, Kristen even planned a craft - they got to decorate different Halloween scenes to put in their very own mugs (and then we gave them hot chocolate in their mugs when they were done). It was kind of awesome. Thanks, Kristen!



It's always a goal and an adventure to get a group photo of all the kids in their costumes. This year's turned out shockingly well (meaning none of the children are screaming and some of them are smiling)!


Here's my sweet cowboy nephew, Atticus:
and Ursula with baby Isabelle:

My boys:


And lots of family (minus daddies) shots:





Isabelle, again:

being entertained by Ryan & Emmy:
Kaeden was also entertained by Baylie once he finished his lunch.

Once everybody started to crash, we turned on the Berenstain Bears' Halloween, which kept the kiddos very occupied while the mommies had some more peaceful time to eat, chat, clean up, etc. They were mesmerized!
and how can you have a Halloween party without a pumpkin cake?

Yesterday, Ryan and I started off the day by finally carving a pumpkin during Kaeden's nap. It's always fun when we get some one-on-one time together, and we enjoyed doing this special project together. He helped me scoop and then I let him design the face while I carved. He was very pleased!


We had planned to go to a parade in Kristen's neighborhood, but when the rain started, we jumped ship on that idea, which left Ryan rather disappointed. We decided to do some trick-or-treating anyway, so here is Ryan at his first ever trick-or-treat stop (Auntie & Uncle Bret's house... low pressure!):Mason ended up taking him to quite a few houses in the neighborhood a bit later and they had a blast... and Ryan brought back quite a few goodies! We had fun sorting them together after dinner :)

All in all, a pretty good day!

and now, time to start thinking about Kaeden's birthday.... one year ago at this time, I was watching tv and timing contractions that were still 10-15 minutes apart, wondering if maybe, just maybe this might be it! It was! More on that to come...