birthday celebration...

as promised, here are some pics of my birthday celebration last week! we decided against having an official party for my first and, instead, kept it simple by enjoying some family time here at home. mommy made a two-layer cookie cake with yummy icing (above), and it was so good, as you'll see below! and we spent the day remembering many wonderful moments from the past year, while mommy repeatedly commented, "i can't believe it's been a year already!"

as i've mentioned here before, i love balloons. it was especially fun to play with so many at once, but i made them nervous (mom and dad, not the balloons) because i kept trying to pop them - yikes! i don't actually know what it's like to pop a balloon, but mommy said it would be kind of scary to me and i wouldn't like it, so i'll take her word for it...

here i am trying to eat one instead, and that was the end of the balloons!

mommy had a birthday hat for me to wear throughout the day - gotta love that mommy. :) she meant to cover the pink ribbon with blue or green but didn't have a chance. as you can see, the hat is big enough that i'll get to wear it again next year, and i'll make sure we cover that pink! here i am enjoying real milk - yum! i am off bottles and formula completely, and i love drinking milk out of a cup like big boys!

this is where the real fun begins... as you can see, i really liked the cookie-cake!

i'm not very good at portion control, though. mostly if there's food on my tray, i stick it in my mouth, regardless of how much food is already in my mouth (or my tummy!) at the time...

here's me about half-way through... i'm feeling a little full by now, but there's still cookie to be eaten, so i persevere...

at this point i start to wonder what the catch is. mommy typically makes sure i don't eat too much at a time, and i've definitely never had this much sugar in my life. i check with daddy to be sure i'm not going to get into trouble at any point (while eating all the while, of course)...

when he didn't stop me, i really started to get suspicious. maybe mommy was too busy snapping pictures to notice what was going on! wait a minute, is this even my real mom? it sure looked like her, but this was weird...

but sure enough, that was really my mom, and it was really my birthday, and so the cookie kept coming!!! i've never been allowed to get this messy before, so i was very curious about all the crumbs and bits of food and icing everywhere...

and finally, i had eaten enough! truth be told, i could've eaten more, but mommy eventually decided it was enough. YUM! birthdays are great!

here i am a bit later walking and playing... check out my tummy - WHOA!! yikes. mommy and daddy got a kick out of that, but it's probably a good thing that birthdays only come around once a year!

birthdays are also fun because of the presents. even though beamee and grampee couldn't celebrate with me on my special day, they did send presents - woohoo! grampee got me a cool little car (pt cruiser, of course!), which i love, and beamee got me a neat book about trains, and some special train cake-candle-holders that mommy used as a child, and a membership to the austin children's museum! i'm very excited about that! :)

aunt mandy and jacy came over for a bit, and aunt mandy gave me a phone! very cool! i was fascinated, as you can see...

so all in all, my birthday was really great! i wonder what kind of dessert i will have next year...

that's mostly all i have to report this time. here's another random picture (of me honking daddy's nose)...

and here's our new kitchen wall! actually, the wall isn't new, but the paint is - it's chalkboard paint! daddy painted over the sadly outdated floral wallpaper, and then hung a big bulletin board and some little buckets! for now, mommy loves drawing on the wall, but i will get to draw on it pretty soon too! i'm putting this picture on here because mimsie asked me too, since she and grandpa couldn't come this weekend. i was really sad about that but am purposely not mentioning it very much so no one starts crying. i know i will get to see them again really soon though! in the meantime, here's our new wall. so anytime someone sends us a card or picture or something, we'll hang it on the board and think of them! pretty cool. thanks dad. :)

bye!!!!!!!!!!