1st Birthday Party!

After months and months of planning and lots of money spent, we finally celebrated Alex's 1st birthday. I put way too much time, money and effort into it but it was worth it all. Despite the heat we had lots of great family and friends come to the house to help celebrate and it seemed like everyone had a great time. 


We go lucky that his actual birthday landed on a Saturday so we could have the party on that day. I also planned the party for noon, the time he was born but it was actually a complete accident.


Some of the decorations I made:

All of the food was named with Mickey characters. My favorite was the Hot Diggity Dogs and Burgers.

Mickey heads with pictures from every month, including 12 months that we took first thing that morning.

The banner. It took way too long to cut all those hands out!

His smash cake from Cassie. The Mickey is a stuffed animal that I had embroidered with "Alex's 1st Birthday" so we can keep it forever.

The butt on the onesie I ordered. The front was really cute too and is in the  pictures below.

Here are the things Alex loved about his party:

All the new toys, like Rocky, the motorized rocking horse from Nana and Poppy.

And the new truck that looks like Poppy's.

He would have stayed in the truck all day if we would have let him.

Loved playing with all my friends!

The whole play group made it!

LOVED Mickey showing up. When he walked out of the house, Alex started waving and clapping. It was too cute.

Great group of kids at the party and there are 5 missing from this picture, 2 younger babies that had gone down for nap and 3 older kids that weren't big fans of Mickey.

Actually enjoyed opening the presents, unless it was clothes, he threw those and went looking for toys.

Liked all the new presents, especially the ones that make lots of noise.

Things Alex really didn't like about his party:

The only thing he didn't like was the cake. He acted like it tasted horrible. I tasted it and it was delicious so he is just a weird child. We tried again at his 1 year pics and he still hated it.

Didn't like having the icing all over him but enjoyed playing in the sink while mommy was cleaning him off.

Someone Turned 1!

I know it has been a really long time since the last blog but I will make up for it with a few today. As I mentioned in another post, we now have a very mobile toddler and therefore little free time on our hands. On June 23rd that little monster turned one. I am still in shock that a year has already gone by. Wow, it was fast!


I have posted pictures of his photo sessions throughout the year and we had the last session on the 30th. We had purchased a package called "Baby's First Year" from our photographer and the 1 year pictures were the last session. Daddy took Reagan fishing the morning of the session so it was just baby and mommy. For the most part the session went really good despite the fact that it was already 90 degrees when we met Hilly at 9:30 that morning. Here are a few from the session:

These are separate pictures that I am going to frame like this. These were not easy to take since he is not a fan of sitting still for very long (hence the N being a standing picture.)

Mommy and baby in matching championship shirts!

This was at the end of the session and he was running away. Totally done with pictures.

Trying to play with Hilly's camera.

These blocks were taking the place of his "Alex" stool since we were missing a letter at the time of pictures. We later found the letter in the trash. Someone likes to throw everything in the trash right now.

Loved the balloons but only when mommy was holding him.

Still hates cake.

Right before the meltdown that ended the session. He was hot and tired and was done taking pictures.

Daddy's Little Helper....

On the way home last weekend we saw a yard sale in our neighborhood and Matt stopped so I could take a quick look. He knows I like to check it out for treasures. But he actually spotted a "backpack" and we ended up getting it for $6. Now Alex can ride around with us and we can still get stuff done!

Alex helped daddy water the garden the other night...

Big Kid Food!

So apparently we were a little slow to start introducing Alex to more complex solid foods. We were moving right along with the purees and not thinking twice about it. So when he started bucking the purees I called the doctor's office and found out we should have been introducing him to more "big kid" foods for a while now. Whoops! Better safe than sorry I guess. So this week I hit the grocery for some new foods. Here are the results:


Cottage Cheese - YUCK! Hilarious face though.
Vanilla Yogurt - same as cottage cheese. I bought some blueberry yogurt but haven't tried that yet.
Cheerios - ranks up there with the wonderful puffs for a snack.
Turkey - has been on the menu for a while but he seems to like it more and more every day. Especially those nasty turkey sticks that remind me of Vienna sausages.
Watermelon and Cantaloupe - LOVES it.
Tomato - had just a couple of small bites of daddy's but seemed to really like it. Mommy is really out numbered now.
Spaghetti Os - YUCK! Which really surprised me.
Ravioli - Not so bad. Sometimes eats them like they are his favorite, sometimes not such a fan.


We will keep moving along with new foods and hopefully he won't be too picky of an eater.

First bite of Ravioli. Ignore the bib, it was June 3rd, not October. :)

Must be pretty good!

Might be a little mischievous....

I have no idea where he gets it from (enter sarcasm here) but my child seems to have a mischievous streak a mile long. Here is my evidence to support this accusation....

Not only is he climbing on top of paper towels to get in the pantry, the picture doesn't show that he was grabbing things off the shelf and throwing them onto the floor. Ignore my messy pantry, I was in the process of cleaning it out and it looks MUCH better now, no thanks to my "helper" here.

"I have no idea how all that dirt got on the floor!"

Someone has made a terrible mess of Mimi's kitchen!

There is only one parent I can blame this one on....Daddy! The look on his face says it all though.

In case the pictures aren't enough, how about a video of what Matt calls his "evil laugh". This is the laugh he does when he knows he is up to no good...

Beans Bean, Good For Your Heart....

I can never figure out what it is about tooting and tooting noises that kids think is so funny but we discovered yesterday that the hilariousness of the tooting noise starts at a very young age. This happened once before I grabbed my camera and I am so glad I was able to catch it and get it recorded. Matt and I replayed this several times last night and laughed every time...

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night....

This was just too funny not to post....

Just another random evening in a diaper before bath time wearing Sissy's sunglasses.