Happy Birthday!

Wow, our little man turned one this weekend!  We were so excited to see so many of our friends and family members come to help us celebrate.  So excited, in fact, that I took zero pictures of our guests. Oops.  Austin did great considering a) he finally caught my cold on his birthday; b) he has 3 new teeth coming in, and c) 27 strangers showed up at his house after he woke up from his morning nap.  He's been a bit more clingy lately and will actually raise his arms up to be picked up or put his arms out to be transferred to mom or dad.  Pretty cute, although I think our arm muscles are in for quite a workout if he keeps this up!  When he woke up crying from a nap over the weekend he actually saw me and said 'mamama' with his arms reaching towards me - I'm pretty sure thats the first time that I felt like he was actually communicating with me.  Anyways, back to the birthday party.  What a lucky kid - 'Uncle' Jeremy came to town to visit and brought pretty much the coolest party decoration around:

A Lego Duplo mosaic of his name!  How cool is that?  We definitely need to get a ledge for his wall to put this sign on!  I wonder when he'll finally tear it apart into its individual blocks...

We also, of course, had balloons, which were a big hit.  Thankfully none of them popped while Austin was playing with them.  He and the other kids were definitely enjoying the balloons!

What's a party without a cake, of course.  Maria, Jeremy, and Mike all helped me make carrot cake cupcakes with greek yogurt frosting the night before.  We also made a small 6" round cake for Austin to dig into (even though there's no way he'd eat that much). 



Near the end of the party we served the cupcakes to our guests thinking that we might just do Austin's cake later when less people were around.  But then he kept trying to eat my cupcake so I figured lets give it a shot and see what he does.  I'd say his initial reaction was 'What is that?'  He stuck a finger in to see if he could figure it out.

The crowd gathered around, and I think he got a little shy so several minutes went by and he pretty much stuck with the same expression:

Mike helped him investigate a bit, and finally he dug in taking small bites of cake. 

Clearly  he wasn't acting quickly enough, because little Augie who is 3 months older saw an opportunity to sneak in and try and help him out.  Austin was not amused! 

 We probably let him play with/eat the cake for 20 minutes or so.  He was definitely intrigued, and possibly unsure why we gave him something so big when he's used to picking up bite size pieces of things! 

I'm one!

The best was probably 15 minutes later when the crowd started to disperse and everyone wasn't just staring at him.  Both hands went straight into the icing, a smirk appeared on his face, and a huge fist full of icing went into his mouth.  I think he was quite a happy kid at that moment!

There were far too many gifts to open later that afternoon after the party was over.  We were all fairly exhausted and Austin was mostly refusing to nap.  We hung out with some of the wrapped presents...

tried a nap, tried going for a drive, went on a walk...and finally we had success.  The poor kiddo was so exhausted!

The next day we dug into the presents.  Again 'Uncle Jeremy' wins the prize for coolest present ever.  A solid cube of Duplos complete with zoo animals and train cars.  We had no idea if Austin would be interested or not, but he immediately crawled over and began taking pieces off and trying to put pieces on.  I'd say he played for a good 20 minutes, mostly with a very serious expression on his face that said 'guys, back off, I"m building.'. 

Of course, what is a 1 year old birthday without something musical as well.  We got several toys with sounds, but again, Jeremy takes the cake with this one.  Its a little advanced for Austin, but with some assistance, he loved it!

In non-birthday  news, Austin has hit a standing milestone.  He's not great at it, but for the last week or two he loves climbing up on us, letting go, and standing for a few seconds before falling down.  He's gotten alot more steady even in the past week and this weekend would even try and leave one of our hands to walk towards the other.  That usually resulted in him letting go, taking one step, and falling into the other's arms...but he's getting there. 

All in all it was a wonderful weekend.  We we all hoping that the teething pains go away soon and give us at least a few weeks before new teething pains start.  Its so sad to see Austin fuss when his teeth are bothering him because we know what a happy kid he can be!  Hopefully spring will finally warm up the temperature outside and let us get in some outdoor activity...being couped up this winter has been rough!