I am really getting bad at keeping up with our blog! Here I am a month later writing about Reese’s birthday. Honestly the most daunting part of sitting down to write a post is uploading photos! Well, enough procrastinating….
While August is usually a time of 3 weeks vacation for Ryan, this year he had to travel a couple times during the month and he was in Canada for the last few days of the month. On the day he flew back his parents flew over from NJ, just in time for Reese’s first birthday.
Ryan wanted to have a pirate-themed party for Reese, so I did what I do best and got on Pinterest to start planning the decor and food. Like every other time I’ve gotten ideas from Pinterest, things took more work and time to put together than I thought, and we were working until the last minute to get everything done! But the party was a success… and we had a huge sigh of relief when it was over!
We invited some friends and we were happy to have Ryan’s parents here too since we didn’t have any family here for Makenna’s first birthday (well, any of her birthdays). Against my better judgement, I followed a Pinterest idea and provided the kids with inflatable pirate swords. This led to some loud and “energetic” sword fighting for awhile, but it thankfully didn’t get out of hand. Then we set up a “Captain Hook’s ring toss” and that kept the kids happy for awhile. Ryan did an awesome job making a pirate ship out of a watermelon and filled it will fruit. We also had “fish and chips” (chips and Goldfish crackers) and homemade pizza. Ryan’s mom helped me make cupcakes for the guests and a small vanilla cake for Reese. This time I decided to keep it pretty simple for the cake since Makenna’s first birthday cake looked like brains (instead of the beautifully piped rosettes I wanted to make from a Pinterest photo), so I decorated Reese’s cake with a little pirate garland I found on Amazon and used an icing pen to draw a simple treasure map. MUCH better.
Now the most memorable part of a first birthday is always when that sweet little baby eats cake for the first time. Well, I’m not sure if it was because Reese was teething, or didn’t take a nap, or was just not feeling our singing but he cried when we sang Happy Birthday to him and he wasn’t interested in the cake! We tried singing to him again on his actual birthday and he did the same thing! We have videos to look back and laugh at, but hopefully next year he enjoys it more.
It was bittersweet celebrating my baby boy’s first birthday. He is no longer my little baby, but HOORAY we made it through the first year! We had a rough beginning adjusting to having 2 kids, failing at breastfeeding, dealing with a baby who cried 24/7 until we found out he had a milk protein allergy and acid reflux, and having him teething almost constantly since he was 4 months old (he has 9 teeth and has 3 more working their way through!!). I have been so blessed to be able to stay home with him and witness all of his firsts and see Makenna interact with her baby brother. It has been an amazing year watching him grow, watching the love between our 2 kids, and seeing how much joy he has brought to us all. And yes it’s true….little boys are mommy’s boys!! 🙂
Happy 1st birthday Reese Joseph!
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