First Birthday Party!

You know what's great about 1 year olds? They have no idea when their birthday is, so when everyone gets sick, it's not a big deal to shift that party to the next weekend.

You know what else is great about them? They have no idea what presents are, so when their 3 year old brother is completely losing his marbles about festively wrapped packages he's not supposed to touch, you can relent halfway through the party and let him unwrap everything while she sleeps in a cake coma.

That about covers it. Oh yeah, they're pretty cute too.

even when they have chocolate all over 'em

and especially if I'm not holding them. (Thanks, Mere!!)

90% asleep

The unwrapping

100% asleep

The table of snacks and cake. We had a polka dot theme. A whole platter of candy dots, a jar of M&Ms...

Plus Kix and Trix and Rainbow Chex Mix, which was astonishingly easy to make and came out beautiful and delicious! The polka dots on the cake are more M&Ms...

#Pinterestwin!

Note that everything has now been crammed together in the middle of the table. It was very very hard not to touch the cake. Very hard.

Why is everyone looking at me?

I wonder what the neighbors are doing?

Polka dot cascarones

I was super proud of my balloon chandelier, so I took way too many picture of it. I got a huge crochet hoop at Goodwill a while back, (like, 18 inches in diameter maybe?) and that thing has been great fun. It was the crow's nest for Austin's pirate party, with some black cloth and skeletons. For this, I tied ribbons all around the inner hoop and then tied balloons on the ribbons and then slid them around until it looked dense enough. Then I put the outer hoop on and suspended it from our chandelier over the table. Very easy! And when Daddy took it down, he put the balloons to good use in the play pen.

The fungeon

Southern Exposure

This is the story of Austin's first trip to LA to see Grandpa and Mere...


We stayed in a fancy hotel. Actually, the elevators at the hotel may have been his favorite part of the trip. I would have gotten a picture of him enjoying the koi pond too, but keeping him out of the pond took both hands.
















We got to sit in a big boy chair because everyone with toddlers hits the buffet at the same time.

















Here we are visiting the Farmer's Market. Everyone eagerly anticipated Austin's first pony ride...


















Except Austin. Here we see some intense negotiations...
















And here we see Austin leaving the pony rides...












We rode Dad instead.


















We'll have more on the bubble gun later. It merits a post all by itself. Let's just say that the guy parked between the market and the park selling those suckers was a genius.















And travel is just exhausting! Thank goodness we have people to drive us home and put us to bed :)

The Catsitter

She tries so hard.
But we probably don't need any more feline help on the sleep training front.

I Know Someone Who Had TWO Birthday Parties

It was this guy! What a lucky little man!




But we still did not want to wear our hat.



















We did eat lots of cake.














Lots and lots of cake.






















And there were cascarones!






















And presents!

And a well deserved nap.*

*photos may not represent order of events,
since we kind of fell asleep before the cake and presents

(Some of) Mom's Favorite (and not yet published) Pictures

In no particular order! Because it are my birthday :)

A Very Sleepy Baby

In honor of sleeping through the night in his crib, here are some other places Austin has slept...


In the bassinet at the hospital (this is a yawn, not a cry).
























In our car seat (which we have already outgrown).

In Mom's lap.
















And in our own crib :)

Guess Who Slept ALL Night Last Night!

This guy! In his own crib and everything! We're thrilled.

We'd be even more thrilled if we got a repeat performance this evening. Not to be ungrateful, but if anyone happens to be taking requests...



Update: He wasn't.






And it seems like a million years since he slept like this:

Austin: The Early Days

The real purpose of this blog is to make it easy for family and friends to keep up with his majesty's activities. Especially since flip seems to be slowly dying. We will make an effort to upload our video collection here for everybody's convenience. Without further ado, here is one of his very first pictures in the hospital.

And here is one of the first movies we originally shared of him. He is 18 days old.