1st birthday :)

Joe's 1st birthday party was a fun-filled days-long celebration!

First up was lunch on his actual birthday with his cousins (the ones that don't go to school on Thursdays, that is) for a little pizza followed by ice cream cones. (Notice how little ice cream is actually in his cone? Yeah, I ended up scooping most of that out because it was in his way.)

 I forgot to mention that our little birthday boy was barely 24 hours in to an antibiotic for a double ear infection (and dealing with "terribly swollen gums", to quote the pediatrician.) So it wasn't exactly the happiest of birthdays. He woke up from his afternoon nap screaming & tugging at his ears. This was the first clear sign that it was his ears bothering him, as the fussiness leading up to his diagnosis wasn't specific to a certain pain. For 30 minutes, he was completely inconsolable. No amount of food, drink, cuddling, or Elmo helped. It was basically the saddest 3o minutes ever, as I sat here helpless, unable to make the ear pain go away.  In another attempt to calm him down, I tried taking him outside.

He was calm for about 2 minutes. And then the poor guy had had enough. Does this not just break your heart?

 Once the afternoon dose of Advil kicked in, we got a marginally happy baby back for the rest of the day, which included a trip to the park...

...dinner at Firehouse Grille (which meant getting to sit on the firetruck!)...

 ...presents...

 (...eating the darn pointy hat we kept forcing him to wear all day...)

...and dessert! He loved the singing, couldn't care less about the brownies.

On Saturday, Joe was surrounded by all of his favorite people at his big firetruck birthday party! Until very recently, he hadn't really taken a liking to any particular character or toy. So I just picked a theme that I thought was boyish but also fun & easy to do. Turned out to be the perfect choice :)

I had a ton of fun planning this party and even managed to get a lot done ahead of time (unlike Brooke's birthdays, which I usually don't start planning until Dec 26th, for obvious reasons, giving me just a few days to pull it all together.)

He had a mountain of gifts to open thanks to our very generous family and friends. He only tolerated the first half dozen or so before he started getting really antsy. Between the lingering ear infections and the fact that it was already pushing his usual bedtime at this point, I'd say he did a good job. Thankfully, everyone seemed to understand and didn't complain that I was opening all of his gifts for him :)

 It didn't help that this adorable fire truck was one of the first things he opened. Very little could pull his attention away from it after that.

 He was super crabby as we ventured outside for cake time. But the moment we started singing Happy Birthday, he perked right up!

 He was fascinated by the candle on his cake. Didn't really try to touch it, just didn't understand what was happening with it. Once again, Mommy stepped in to help out, this time with blowing out the flame.

 Not sure what it is about my kids, they just don't care for birthday treats! After taking a taste or two of the icing, he was uninterested in it. Not exactly the typical "destroy the cake as fast as you can" behavior often seen by birthday babes.

Ah, a cookie - much less intimidating, much easier to throw on the ground once he ate all the icing off of it.

Love this birthday boy :)

Thanks again to everyone who helped us celebrate the big 1st birthday with our big boy! We still can't believe we have a 1-year-old!