Choo Choo: 1st Birthday Party!

Yesterday, we hosted about 35 of our friends and family in our little house to celebrate Cartman's first birthday. It was exhausting and took a LOT of work, but we had a blast with everyone and had so much fun celebrating the first year! And now, a LOT of pictures. :) We had a great day and are so appreciative of everyone driving out to the burbs to spend it with us!

First, the decorations and FOOD!

This was a banner of all Carter's monthly pictures! Loved this idea from a blog!

Sweet boy swinging before the party and showing off his precious birthday train tee!

Sweet Cousin Liam

Carter and his future wifey, Madelyn in her precious shades!

Sweet friends

Strawberry break!

Love these girls!

Matching grandmas and sweet KK

Cupcake time! He LOVED being the center of all the attention!

Play time!

Loved this!!

Are all these presents for me?!?

Older cousins showing C how it's done.

Sweet personalized gifts from Gammy and Doc!

Dede and Poppy got me my first tricycle!

Gammy (and balloon) love.

Happy 1st Birthday, Cartman!

Well, Cartman, we made it! One year down! I have to admit, I was super emotional on your actual birthday (Thursday) because I couldn't spend the day with you and was so sad that you are growing up so fast. I seriously am in shock that I have a TODDLER on my hands! But baby boy, you are just one big GOOFBALL and crack me up every day, so I have no doubt that the good times will continue long past that first crazy year. Before we get to the actual birthday rundown, let's talk about you at 12 months.

Believe it or not, I have NO SICKNESS to report this month (other than a minor cold that required no meds)! Hallelujah! You cut two new teeth this month and now have a total of 8 - 4 top and 4 bottom. Your smile just gets more and more precious every day!

You are still a stud at eating and are on total table food - you love yogurt, oatmeal, bananas, deli turkey, any veggie (No seriously, if it's green, orange, or yellow, you down it. Love that!), graham crackers, yogurt melts, ravioli, and meatballs. You decided this month that you HATE chicken...like, chew it up, make a face, and spit it back out, hate it...so getting any protein in you is quite a challenge since chicken is our primary meat. Luckily, you LOVE your whole milk (no more formula!) and drink about 20 ounces of it a day, so I don't worry about the protein too much. The one challenge we have on our hands with you in the nutrition department is getting you to give up those bottles. We've tried and tried and tried, but stubborn bug, you will just NOT drink milk from a sippy cup. We've tried straw cups, warming the milk, putting chocolate syrup in the milk, rocking you while giving you the cup, everything (!!) and you will have NONE of it. I've just decided you're not ready, so we'll work more on this over the summer. For now, I'm just letting it go. It's just not worth the fight!

As far as sleep goes, you ROCK baby boy. You are down from 7/7:30pm until 6:30/7am every night. Over the past two months, I think we've seriously heard you peep once. Maybe. And it was a short peep while teething. We LOVE YOU for this!! As far as naps go, we think you'll be ready to drop down to one nap a day over the summer. We do this occasionally on weekends when we are out and about, and you're fine with it. On an every day basis though, you typically take 2 naps still - one from 9:30-11am and a second from 2-3pm.    

No walking yet. We think you are very close but just don't seem interested, honestly. You've gotten much more confident this month walking behind your push walker, let go and stand for a few seconds more, and are cruising more one-handed, so who knows. Could be tomorrow, could be two months - I honestly have no idea!

Ok, so let's talk about the birthday celebration! We woke you up on your birthday morning by singing you "Happy Birthday" which you loved and then spent some snuggle time in our bed. After a bottle and getting you dressed, you discovered your birthday present - a new climber for the backyard! You LOVED it and I think will like it even more once you start walking.

You then had a great day at school and we came home early to take you for a walk and to the park. Then, we made you your favorite dinner (lasagna) and it was a hit!

Since it was your actual birthday, we decided you had to have dessert even though we wanted to save the cupcake for your birthday party, so we let you "practice" eating dessert with an iced sugar cookie. No trouble there - you dug right in and ate the whole thing!

We had such a great day with you and even better birthday party today! Post on that coming tomorrow...this momma is wiped OUT! Love you, buddy!

First Easter

We had a great day celebrating Carter's first Easter! We got up early this morning to open his Easter basket. He got a new truck, V-tech ball, 2 books, a stuffed dinosaur and sported some awesome new PJ's too! :)

We then headed on to church at Hope Fellowship where he again sported some amazing duds! He was in a great mood before church and even let us take a few pics! (Although it appears that Mommy may have needed another cup of coffee at this point...)

After church, we came home to rest and recharge for a family-packed afternoon. After a nap followed by a walk, we headed over to Blake's parents' house for lunch with Nick, KK, Gramma Pat, and my parents. We had a blast and you were SUCH a little party boy the whole time!

Last stop of the day was back to my parents' house for one last Easter surprise. We had hoped the little man would also nap there (they have an old crib set up), but apparently he had just had too much fun and refused it. :) Can't say we didn't try, right?

Carter was spoiled yet again with a Build-a-Bear stuffed bunny, Sing-a-majig, and two new books! We had such a blast celebrating today and look forward to our first Easter egg hunt next year! God is good! :)

11 Months

Chunky monkey, you are 11 months today! I am currently planning your 1st birthday party and cannot believe I am about to be a mommy to a TODDLER! In so many ways, I feel like you were JUST born, and in so many other ways, I feel like you've been part of our life forever. You are SO MUCH FUN right now and are EVERYWHERE! You crawl at about 90 mph and cruise like a maniac. You stand without support for a few seconds from time to time (accidentally I think), and you will walk a few steps holding onto our hands, so I'm not sure whether or not you'll be walking soon or not. Your daddy and I both walked before we were a year old, but I'm just FINE though with you taking some time on that front, so baby boy, don't rush it! You are exhausting enough as it is now! :)

On the sleep front, this month has been rough as far as naps are concerned. Your nights are still just the BEST and you sleep for 11-12 hours each night (7:30-6:30/7) without a peep. Naps are a rougher subject - you are a CHAMP typically at home and naps last 1-2 hours each. At daycare, not so much. Your naps there are MUCH shorter...usually 25-40 minutes each. I've tried EVERYTHING I can think of to help you get more sleep - moving your crib, a white noise machine, changing up the times - but it just seems to be too loud of an environment for you to truly relax in, so most nights you catnap either in the car seat on the way home or in the stroller on our evening walk. I'm okay with that since it's not messing up your nights, but poor thing, you are SO overtired during the week that it just hurts me to watch. Fortunately, you are about to move to the scheduled mid-day nap from 12-2:30, so hopefully you'll sleep the whole time once those become the norm.

As far as eating goes, you are a rockstar! You eat just about anything we put in front of you, but you are NOT a fan of bread or cheese. (Although, ironically, you LOVE goldfish and cheez-its.) You are on total table food at this point eating 3 meals a day plus 1-2 snacks and drinking water/diluted juice like a champ out of a sippy cup. You do NOT appreciate me putting formula in your sippy though and seem to get a little worked up if I expect you to drink it that way, but we'll get rid of those bottles eventually. Some of your favorite foods right now are yogurt, peas/carrots, applesauce, rice, chicken, ravioli, ground turkey, graham crackers, bananas, and vanilla wafers. 

You have become quite the talker recently and seem to attach any consonant sound to "a" - you've got baba, dada, mama, wawa, gaga, and vava down, and you are especially found of grunting, growling, and screaming. (Lovely.) Tonight, I listened to you talk yourself to sleep and it was just precious. We now put soft books in your bed, so you "read" yourself to sleep at night and "read" when you first get up in the morning. It is the cutest thing in the world! (And secretly, I tell myself it's making you smarter...)

You also got a new tooth this month on the bottom, so we have 3 top and 3 bottom at this point that I know of, although I'm fairly certain more are coming in. I get a little worried because most of your teeth are on one side of your mouth, but you'll even out eventually right? :) You started brushing your teeth this month and giggle every time we do it. You are Mr. Independent and love to chew on the toothbrush brush your own teeth, too. Such a big boy!

Well, I think that's about it! We LOVE this age and are so excited to plan your first birthday party! We are so blessed to be your parents and love you so much little one!

STATS:

Weight: 22.5/23 pounds

Height: 31 inches

Clothes: 12 month or 12-18 month

Diapers: Size 3