Nicolas' First Birthday!

Nicolas, our baby, turned 1 yesterday.  It is hard to believe that a whole year has gone by, that seemed to go really fast!  Nicolas is a great walker and spends his days walking around the house carrying a spoon and a bowl.  He smiles, laughs, dances, claps, and eats.  He is a very verbal kid and is already using a few words (cracker, yes, Mama, Dada, bye, hi, boo, ball, backpack backpack yeah!).  He likes to eat and is usually willing to try new foods--although he absolutely refuses to eat macaroni and cheese from a box, preferring real, homemade pasta.  Laurel can't wait for him to get big enough to really play with her and wrestle with her.

Nicolas likes to crawl into the space between the sofa and the stair banister, then peek out and say Boo!  I like how the static is making his hair stick to the sofa.

I have tried not to give Nicolas any desserts, and have been pretty successful so far.  He has only had a couple bites of cookie and a little muffin previously--if he takes after me at all he will have a huge sweet tooth, and I don't want him to only want to eat sweets for the rest of his life!  We gave him a homemade chocolate cupcake on his birthday.  He wasn't sure what to do with the candle, but he sure knew what to do with the cupcake!  He shoveled it into his mouth, making yummy noises the entire time.

Multi-tasking at it's finest: eating cupcake and picking the nose at the same time.

 I don't generally like to throw big birthday parties for every birthday--I'm content to just have our family celebrate with a cake, or get together with extended family on a Sunday and celebrate all birthdays from that month.  However, this year Scott and I decided that we would throw a big party for Nicolas since we hadn't seen some family members for a while.  We decided to have it the Saturday after his birthday, and were able to hold it in our church basement.  We figured we would serve lunch and some kind of cake, and just hang out for a while.

At the time, I didn't fully comprehend that we were planning it right after a week when Scott would be gone out of town for most of the week.  Plus, I had places I had to go to on 3 nights during that week, and would not be able to get much done after the kids went to bed.  Plus, I'm now watching another kid in the mornings and get up at 6am, so am more tired at night.  Plus we were planning to have some relatives spend the night Friday night, so I had to get the house ready for that (aka: clean bathrooms and wash sheets) during the week.  Yikes!  I made the cupcakes in advance, put together the food little by little throughout the week, and finished up on Friday when Scott was home.  Our overnight guests ended up not being able to come due to inclement weather, so I was able to skip taking care of the bedding...I still cleaned the bathrooms because they were gross.  I hate gross bathrooms...and I hate cleaning bathrooms.  But I digress...

I went to church early and got everything set up and cooked the taco meat, and Scott came later with the kids.  We had almost 30 people there, and had a great time!  Thanks for coming, everyone!

All ready for the party-goers!

I didn't bring enough baby food, but we discovered that Nicolas really, really likes taco meat.  And even eats some cheese.

We had the world's fastest present opening, as Nicolas did not have a long attention span.  I quick opened everything for him, and then the kids started playing with all the toys.

It has been a fun birthday weekend.  I know that Nicolas will not remember this, but I'm glad we were able to get together with family and friends and have fun together.  However, next time we decide to plan a big birthday party, I might think twice if Scott will be gone the week before...