2011 was a wonderful year. And I fully expect 2012 to kick it’s butt. Here’s a quick look back at what made 2011 such a great year…
1) Enjoying the 1st snow of the year with my chunky little fella. It just so happened to be his 1st snow EVER. He loved every moment of the cold stuff.
2) Seeing my husband fall head over heals in love with someone other than me.
3) Taking Gray to the zoo for the 1st time with my good friend Rachel. (or as Gray knows her as…Stinky Rachel) I promise the name has nothing to do with the way she smells.
4) Taking the 6 month photos that perfectly captured Grayson’s personality.
5) Going skiing with some wonderful friends in Park City, UT.
6) Knowing that my sweet girl, Wrigley, was going to be okay after her emergency surgery. This may have been the most terrifying month of my life. However, knowing that we could have lost her and now getting to see her sweet puppy face everyday made everyday of 2011 a favorite. You can read more about the squeaky toy that almost killed our dog here, here, here, and here. HUG YOUR PUPPIES EVERYDAY!
7) Grayson was born at the end of the summer, and never got the chance to go swimming during 2010. I wait patiently all winter/spring long for summer to arrive. Let me just tell you, Grayson was meant to be in the water. He loves big pools, baby pools, lakes, bathtub, and dog water bowls (ewww!). If it’s got water my boy is happy. So #6 would have to be spending the summer in the pool and at the lake with Squishy. We are planning to take a beach trip this summer, and I can’t wait to see his face when he sees the ocean for the first time.
Seeing my baby turn ONE! I still can’t believe it.
9) If this kid wasn’t cute enough already I had to go and throw a puffy shark costume on him for Halloween. Trick-or-Treating with this baby shark was hilarious.
10) Watching Gray fall into his 1st pile of leaves.
11) Enjoying a busy but amazing Christmas with my two favorite boys.
The final chapter of our little birthday bash includes a some cake smashing and wrapping paper ripping.
Grayson is always pretty direct about what he wants. Here he is showing Daddy where he needs to put that cake.
He got so excited when he saw Derek approaching with the cake. I don’t understand why he doesn’t clap when I approach with broccoli at home. Some mysteries will never be solved.
Like I said in Part 1 the head of the robot was Grayson’s smash cake.
When looking at the head, on the cake, you don’t quite realize the size of this bad boy.
But sitting alone, on a high chair tray, in front of a one year old the head is a beast! The thing barely fit on the tray. At least there was no shortage of cake that day.
I just love when he makes this face. So precious.
Feeding Daddy a little cake.
My sister and I thought it would be funny to make the head of the cake red velvet. We are twisted, I know. But it made for hilarious photos. Plus, red velvet is my favorite. My wedding cake was red velvet for Pete’s sake.
I don’t know why he kept sticking his thumb in the top of the cake. Density testing?
He’s so proud of himself. I swear he thinks he’s the funniest person he knows.
The finished product…
The aftermath…
It was like a crime scene in there so a quick bath was in order.
After what we will forever refer to as “The Incident” it was time to tear into some presents. Opening presents at his party was so different than at his 1st Christmas. He was only 4 months old then, and all though adorably chunky he couldn’t really do much tearing of the paper back then.
Gray had lots of assistance while opening his presents. Carter & Nolan just turned 1, and were willing to assist as they are very practiced at opening presents.
One of the gifts Derek and I gave Gray was a wooden xylophone made by Plan Toys. I love this line of toys. Plan Toys are eco friendly, baby friendly and beautiful too. Every so often I buy a toy from their line as a “just because” gift for Grayson. The xylophone is one of Grayson’s favorite toys these days, and mommy likes that it is nowhere near as loud as the plastic/metal ones kids normally have. My ears have thanked me time and time again for this purchase.
The party was so much fun and wore this little boy and his parents out. Thank you to my parents for letting us trash their house, and thank you to all that helped out and attended the party to celebrate my little boy’s 1st year of life.
Is it over already?
If you missed Part 1 or Part 2 of Grayson’s Robot themed 1st birthday party you can catch up here and here.
Even though his actual b-day wasn’t for another 5 days, on Saturday August 13th, Gray invited over about 500 of his closest friends under the age of 2 and partied RoBoT style.
This photo is just a glimpse of Gray’s 1 year photo shoot. There are more super cute photos to come. I just need to find the time to edit them.
Since the three of us can barely fit in our house on a day to day basis we thought it best NOT to have his party at our home. Plus, I don’t really care for cleaning. My parents have the perfect house for parties. They have a nice open floor plan that flows, and a dining room that is HUGE, so you can shove a ton of people and wild 1 year olds in there with out people running into to many things.
When I decided on a robot party I found invites that I really liked, but just couldn’t justify paying $50 for something I was going to print out myself. So I drew some inspiration from those pricey invites and designed some myself. What do you think? It was a blast designing them. I have a ton on geeky type fonts now. Looks like I’ll have to find something else to design so I can use them all.
See the binary on the invite? Guess what. If you decode it, it says “Happy Birthday Grayson”. How geeky am I? After the party was over I realized that I should have made a binary banner. How cute would that be? A banner made of zeros and ones that actually means Happy Birthday Grayson. If anyone out there is throwing a robot party please try this banner idea and send me a pic of how it comes out.
I did make a banner using real words.
I’m kinda in love with chevron right now. Trust me, you will notice a trend.
If you put a camera in my hands I take way too many photos. It’s an illness I tell ya. To prevent me from missing special moments during my son’s very 1st birthday party I asked my friend Scott to step in as camera man. He was already going to be there with his little girl and wife. It really helped not trying to be in two places at once.
Since it has been a million plus degrees with a humidity level of 110% here in the south; we decided to keep the food and main party happenings indoors.
We set the food and cake up on the dining room table. Note to self, setting up a food/desert table on a round table is much harder to layout than one would think.
Those two empty silver plates held some of the most delicious bread you will ever lay taste buds on. It’s called Cheddar Bacon Ranch Pulls, but it’s appropriately nicknamed Crack Bread. T-rust me, you’ve got to try this stuff. I will post the recipe soon. Here’s a pic of the bread that I took with my phone.
Did you see that cake? Um yeah. My baby sister, Stephanie, made it for me. She’s been dabbeling in the cake/goodies making game for a few years now so I thought who better to make Gray’s birthday cake than his Aunt Toof. Didn’t she do amazing? She mocked it after a cute little felt robot I found on Etsy. I used paper straws for antennas. As for the tiny banner I used the free printable from TomKat Studio. I changed the font and color of the bunting to match the robot theme a little better.
The head of the robot was Grayson’s smash cake. Just wait until you see the size of this thing next to my kid.
The cupcakes were out-of-the-box chocolate with homemade buttercream icing. YUM! I designed the cupcake toppers and wrappers myself. I kept changing my mind about how I wanted them to look. Up until the week before the party I was tweaking the design constantly. When it comes to graphic design I am never 100% happy with my final product. But what artist is happy with there designs 100% of the time?
See those silver bolts and nuts scattered throughout the table? I picked those up in the dollar section at Target and then spray painted them to look metallic.
I thought about ordering cookies from Etsy, but I was afraid that with this super hot summer the icing would melt and screw all the cookies up while in route to me. I wanted just a few cute cookies with royal icing so I gave it a stab. Thanks to YouTube I learned how to make royal icing and how to ice a cookie with it. Not horrible for my first attempt, but I’m certainly not going into business anytime soon.
In addition to the G’s and gears I also made 1′s, but I just don’t have an up close photo of them.
These little guys were super yummy, but the coloring didn’t come out quite right. I think the cooking spray I used mixed with the blue coloring and turned them a tad green.
I also made some little food labels and table tents.
Originally, we were going to have robot cake pops, but my sweet sister not only was making the most awesome robot cake for the party, she was also working full time, and moving that week. When she finally found time to make the cake pops the cake wouldn’t stay together so she had to scrap them. No big deal though. We had left over sucker sticks and some marshmallows, dipping chocolate, and sprinkles…so we improvised.
I kept going back and forth on the whole party hat thing. I just couldn’t find anything out there that I loved, and ended putting the decision off so long that I ran out of time to order anything. So, about 2 days before the party I decided to make him one from paper I had around the house. It came out pretty cute if I do say so myself.
Derek wanted to contribute to the robot party fun and built a robot from boxes and various things we had laying around the house.
Isn’t that precious? He gave the robot a heart.
When I saw Sarah do this for Manny’s 1st birthday I knew I had to do it for Gray’s. I took different faces of Grayson’s and put party hats on them and used them as added decoration and entertainment for the guests.
During Grayson’s 1st year, I took weekly and monthly photos of him. I decided to display the monthly portraits at the party, but was having trouble deciding how. Derek came up with the idea of displaying them on the piano by the gifts. Perfect.
I don’t really have any up close pics of the drink station, but here are a few I cropped in on to show you what we had.
I made Paula Deen’s Homemade Lemonade and it was delish! I just loooooove homemade lemonade. Unfortunatly, it was the first time I used that drink dispenser and the lemonade poured sooooooo sloooooooowww. Sorry drinkers of lemonade at the party. My bad.
Here’s what the water bottles looked like…
I made some goodie pails for the kiddos to take home. I found the pails in the dollar section at Target, imagine that. I also made a photo book of random happenings from Gray’s 1st year. We asked the guests to write him a little message on a page in the book. I love that everyone signed it. Some of the messages made get a little teary eyed.
It was an amazing day. Our little boy is so loved. Thank you to everyone that came, and thank you for loving our little man. I’ll be back soon with more pics from the party. So stay tuned.
P.S. – Here’s a little video of the party just getting started…
You have become a wild man these past couple of weeks. You’ve begun throwing anything you can get your pudgy little fingers on. Your fits now include full on leg kicking and arm flailing. You still love to drop things just to watch us pick it up. I would have to say that game is one of your favorites.
You are walking more and more. You have figured out that sometimes walking will get you to where you want to go way faster than crawling. You are still working on your balance a bit. You have mastered changing directions while walking. I was quite amazed when I saw that, because you have trouble turning when using your walker.
You still aren’t a huge cuddlier. You are in constant motion and I’m thinking that you believe cuddling only waste time that you could be exploring.
Your favorite show right now is Sid the Science Kid. It’s a PBS show for 4-5 year olds, but for whatever reason your jaw drops and your eyes widen and it becomes extremely hard to get your attention when Sid pops on the screen.
It’s really difficult to keep your attention long enough to feed you a full meal. I’ve found that putting Sid on the TV helps keep your attention so I can shove some food in your mouth.
You are almost done with formula. (side note: mommy still feels bad that I had to stop nursing you at 5.5 months. I still have tiny mommy guilt breakdowns from time to time. I’m a dork, I know.) Where was I, oh yeah, you are almost done drinking formula. Yippee! Since the Target brand and the Gerber brands (the cheaper formulas) constipated you and made you spit up all the time we got to pay tons of money and buy the expensive stuff, Enfamil Premium. Luckily, for the majority of your formula drinking life I was blessed to have a TON of coupons for Enfamil, but they ran out last month so lets get this thing over with, shall we? BTW…you never spit up unless you had one of the cheaper brand formulas. Not even when you nursed did you spit up.
Since formula is expensive and you are beyond healthy we have begun to transition you to whole milk. We started by putting 1 oz in a 6 oz bottle with your formula, and have been slowly increasing the whole milk percentage. I hope to have you totally transitioned soon after your 1st birthday.
Little boy, you have been a handful lately. You squirm like never before. There is no keeping you still. I’ve been working on teaching you things like where your eyes, mouth, hands, feet and other body part are, but to get you to sit still long enough to focus on what I’m trying to teach you is a monumental task.
Starting just a couple of days ago,the first thing you do know when you wake in the morning, and I plop you down in the middle of the living room to play, is walk on over to the TV and push the power button. I don’t think it has anything to do with watching TV. You love to push buttons (literally not figuratively, I’m sure the figurative one will come a bit later) and the button on the TV is big and has a pretty red light on it just begging you to push it.
Your walking is just getting better and better. I would say you are crawling 50% of the time and walking the other 50%. This means I’m gonna have to buy you some shoes, dang.
You have outgrown your Baby Bjorn carrier and I’m a little sad about it. You love your carrier so much. Even when you are strapped into your car seat you hold on to the carrier and nuzzle with it and play with the straps. When you see Momma put it on your eyes light up and a huge smile pops on your face. Don’t worry Mommy bought a new one called Boba that will fit your chubby booty. And you love it just as much. See…
It’s getting harder to get you to go down willingly for your 2nd nap of the day. You shouldn’t be growing out of it yet. I think you still have like another year till you drop down to one a day. Or at least Mommy prays. I’m pretty sure we are about to try moving to a 1 nap per day schedule.
Right now you are stuck on one word. Daddy. You call everyone and everything Daddy.
Thank you for letting me be your mommy for the past 12 months. It has been the adventure of a lifetime, and I can’t wait for more.
I can’t seem to stop it. The kid just keeps getting older. The 1st three months were nice. Time didn’t go by too fast, but these last three. Don’t even get me started. It’s like something new happens everyday. I’m loving it, but also hating it. I mean, these are times that I will never get back. It’s like I don’t want to blink or sleep in fear that I might miss something amazing.
I’m not loving the fact that he is turning into a kid, and leaving that “baby” stage behind. I’m trying to soak up every last minute that he will fit in my arms, or let me rock him to sleep. I kiss this baby so much he probably reeks of my slobber at the end of the day. The kid already has enough of his own slobber on his face he surely doesn’t need any of mine. Oh well, he’s not stopping me so I’m not stopping.
Fun (but weird) Fact: I love kissing his ear lobes. They are just so darn sweet.
I couldn’t seem to get the white balance right while shooting these. I tried numerous times using custom WB and the auto settings on my camera. It just wasn’t working for me. I swear I know how to white balance a photo, but when you are dealing with a squirmy 6 month old you don’t always have the time to keep trying. Better luck next month.
Well, kiddo let’s see. This past month flew by. It was a very emotional month for me, but a very BIG month for you. Here is what you’ve been up to…
* By our approximation, you weigh about 17lbs. We haven’t been in for your 6 month well baby check-up yet. That’s this coming Monday. Your doctor decided he wanted to go on vacation. The nerve. So our appointment got moved back by a week. No biggie. We will see for sure how much you weigh then. If you are not 17 you are no more than 18lbs. I have no clue how long you are. You won’t straighten your legs long enough for me to measure. You have grown out of quite a few one piece outfits this month, so I’m assuming you’ve gotten longer.
* You sat up on your own for the 1st time just two days after you hit the 5 month mark. Daddy and I were so proud of you. You still have a bit of a wobble to you, but you get better every day. Every morning you and I get down on the floor and practice your sitting and your pushing up onto your hands and knees. You know…for crawling.
* When you see a bottle these days you get excited, and begin to reach for it.
* You are shifting objects back and forth between your hands quite well. When you don’t have your hands or feet in your mouth this is your favorite thing to do. Back and forth, back and forth.
* You are destined to be either a runner or a swimmer. While laying on your back you constantly are moving and kicking your legs. If someone holds you upright you are constantly moving and kicking your legs. While in your bouncer and jumper you are constantly kicking and moving your legs.
If Chandler Bing were to see this he would proclaim, “His legs flail about as if independent of his body!” LORD OF THE DANCE! Except, you can’t take dance because your dad and I already decided we don’t want to go to recitals. We get bored. Blame it on my ADD, and blame it on your dad simply not liking recitals.
* I thought you had begun teething before, but now I’m really thinking it. You have been a decent little drooler for a couple of months now, but DAMN! Boyfriend, you drool more than an English Bulldog. So much that you have now developed the drooler’s rash on your chin, cheeks, and nose. I don’t know why your nose, but it’s a bit chapped too. We do our best to keep your face dry, but the second we wipe your face your mouth has released new drool warfare. Not cool.
Then there are the bibs. You go through at least 2+ each day. When you were nursing and NOT drooling all the time I never had to use bibs. You weren’t much of a spitter-upper so there was no use. I thought that we had way too many. Boy was I wrong. I now always on the look out for cheap absorbent bibs thanks to your water works.
Can you see the drool stream coming out of your mouth? You had a bib on until seconds before this shot was snapped. We were trying to get a cute picture of you and your daddy sans bib.
* You now know how to pull your bib off. Not cool. Not cool at all. You need that protection there with the gallons of drool you produce each day.
* You love scratching things with your nails. I think you enjoy textures. A few of your favorite things to scratch on are…
the tin mirror in the living room
your car seat
your bottle
my skin (ouch!)
your bumpers
your rocker in your room (it’s chunky corduroy)
* February 5th was the last day that I nursed you. I hate it, but my milk is almost dried up and it is a pain to pump so long for so little milk. I love nursing you and it really hurts that this time has come to an end. I know you will be fine without it, but it truly was a wonderful bonding experience for us. Now that it is over I almost feel a tiny bit further from you. I know that is not the case, but I feel how I feel. Sometimes I think you look at me confused as to why I am not allowing you to nurse. You still on occasion try to nurse, and can’t figure out why I won’t let you. My milk is slowly drying up and I have started new birth control and I don’t want you to get any in your system. So I don’t. It hurts my heart to see you want to nurse, but can’t.
It was such a hard thing to do, but to do it I had to go cold turkey. I cried a lot that day. I cried while I nursed you for the last time @ 12:30pm. Daddy sat next to me as I held my sweet baby in my arms and kissed your sweet bald head. Daddy rubbed my back and reminded me how much my little boy loved his momma.
I don’t think I would have been so emotional if I had stopped nursing at 3 months, but after almost 6 months it becomes second nature. I learned to love watching you fall asleep in my arms nursing. As a matter of fact, I did get to experience you fall asleep in my arms one last time on Friday. And I will remember that moment forever.
* You are now a full time bottle drinker.
* You have officially been sleep trained! You now sleep through the night. I can’t tell you how excited I am about that. Thank you little man.
* You have a BFF. His name is Beans, and he sleeps with you every night and nap time. Beans is a sweet blue and white puppy dog. You just adore him to pieces.
* You gave momma your first official kiss. It was very slobbery, but most things you do lately are super slobbery. I love and adore your big open mouth kisses. If I give you a kiss on the cheek you will now respond with a kiss on mine. I just melt when this happens. I keep trying to get this on video, but as soon as the camera comes out all you want to do is stare at it. This might be a sign that I take too many pics of you.
* You are starting to get a bit clingy. I can’t say that I mind. Well, I kinda do if I need to pee. Along with the extra mommy time comes you reaching for me. It’s not just the puppies you reach for now. Happy Day!
Here’s a few more pics from this month’s session. This kid was in a very silly mood that day.
This past weekend was the five year anniversary of Derek and I meeting. Remember how I told you that we had mutual friends that brought us together just a few months earlier, yet we never met? Well, they did it again. This time for Halloween. My old roommate Chris, and my current roommate Kaci were friends with Kevin. Kevin was friends with Derek. And they all were getting together for Halloween. I was planning on staying home that year since my boyfriend was in Florida. Kaci wasn’t having it. So she whipped up a costume, out of her sister’s closet, for me and we were off.
Here’s what we looked like when we first met….face to face.
Yes, yes…I was a bumble bee and Derek was one of the two guys from the Hans & Frans SNL duo. Funny thing is the dorks never decided which one they each were. So they introduced themselves as both.
We had a blast that night. Best. Halloween. Ever.
I must admit I didn’t really care for Derek at first. He was a bit annoying. And I also wasn’t really looking for anyone; considering I had a boyfriend and all. When the boy is around certain friends all maturity goes out the window. Don’t worry he started growing on me the next day.
Chris & Derek
Kaci, Leigh, & Me
Ahhhh…the good ‘ole days. When baby cries, spit-up, and mortgages were a things that only grown ups worried about.
Even though I said Derek was a bit annoying that night he did manage to land a kiss on the …..
cheek.
P.S. – I dumped the LDB (Long Distance Boyfriend) and Derek and I started dating 2 weeks later. There may or may not have been a bit of an overlap. Oops.
Seeing my baby turn ONE! I still can’t believe it.
Is it over already?
Can you see the drool stream coming out of your mouth? You had a bib on until seconds before this shot was snapped. We were trying to get a cute picture of you and your daddy sans bib.
Chris & Derek
Kaci, Leigh, & Me
cheek.
