Wy's Big Party

So the party has come and gone...I'm still recovering.

It was a great day.

I spent the previous night with my dad and his wife, who was wonderful enough to give me tons of feedback through the whole party planning process. We did all of those last second things like ordering balloons and grabbing the last of the food supplies then rested up for the main event.

All in all it was a pretty typical family get together. My family anyway. And by my family I mean not only my actual relatives who live close enough to drive to my dad's house, but also a few of my best friends and their kids, friends who are basically my sisters! A few were missing for one reason or another, but for the most part everyone important was in attendance.

Wyatt actually ended up sleeping through the beginning of the party. I thought I had planned his naps well enough that he would be up and fresh, but right before people were supposed to start showing up he started to crab. So he napped while people arrived and said their hellos. Which on one hand was great, once he woke up he was up for the afternoon, happy and smiling the whole time. On the other hand, he had no idea what the heck to do when he woke up and found 20 people at the house! Thankfully my very friendly son adjusted quickly and in no time was smiling laughing and playing.

Honestly I barely saw him most of the afternoon. It felt weird to not be the one making sure he ate and was happy. But it also felt wonderful to be able to talk with my friends and family! I put together a little gift bag scavenger hunt for the other kids, which they seemed to like. Nothing fancy, just collecting goodies from the other people at the party, who they knew to look for based on clues from me. Then they all played outside for a while, the sidewalk chalk was a big hit as were walks (with supervision) around the small pond next to the house.

For cake I did a cupcake cake, which I am so happy I did. It was so easy to just divvy up cupcakes instead of cutting a regular cake. It keeps the "his piece is bigger than mine!" to a minimum. The bonus was that Wyatt just got one cupcake for his first adventure into mass amounts of sugar. I have never understood why bakeries, and parents for that matter, insist babies have such a huge cake on their first birthday. I know that most places will provide a "smash cake" so your kid has their very own to demolish. But really? Do they need something that is bigger than a normal adult slice of cake?

I digress.

Wyatt loved his cupcake. He didn't do any of the tentative touch and smell and taste with the tip of his tongue. He smashed his hand right into it and promptly turned it upside down. I did break off a little bit of the cake part to feed to him just so he knew he could break it apart and eat the whole thing, but after that he was off and running on his own. He devoured every bit of it. There was some frosting left on the plate but I think that was only because he doesn't know how to lick the plate clean yet. He loved that thing.

We didn't open gifts while people were there. By the time we finished eating lunch, singing Happy Birthday, watching Wy eat his cake, and playing outside it was getting late and most everyone needed to get going. My brother and his girlfriend did stay so we could open their gift and I ended up opening everything else at that point too. He got a lot of clothes, some good toys and a toddler basketball hoop! Gram and Poppa got him a little Lego table and Uncle Chris of course picked out some nice chunky starter Legos.

Wyatt crashed pretty early that night, but seemed to have a great day. I'm so proud of how friendly, happy and well behaved my son is. He is just a joy to everyone who meets him. He's just a wonderful little boy!

I'm still having trouble believing he will turn one tomorrow! I could swear he was just born yesterday, not 364 yesterdays ago. So tomorrow at 9:54am I will hug him just like I did a year ago. And I will probably look at him and think again, whose fantastic and beautiful little boy is this?!

The Invites are in the Mail!

That's right, I put them in the mailbox at work today.

Wy's birthday is in 3 weeks!!!

Auntie Jami did a great job creating cute little cards to send...I figure it's worth the money to have some extras and not have to hand write each invite, who has time for that? It was a struggle just to get them all addressed this past week. But the job is done.

Now it's a waiting game till I can do more shopping for the party. I want to get some fun stuff for the kids who will be there, but I don't want to do it till I have a better idea of how many kids will actually be there.

I also have to finish planning the food. That is one thing I am really excited about, we are doing fun fall comfort foods since it's mostly going to be family and I'm sure at some point the party will devolve into everyone watching whatever football game is on that Sunday.

In fact I just checked the NFL schedule and both the Bears and the Packers are playing that day. This means the Bears fans are going to want to have the TV on in the afternoon (heads up, I'm not allowing it, the party is only 3 hours long, DVR the game if you need to see it that bad) and the Packers fans will want to leave early (to get home for the game) or stay late (to watch the game on my dad's nice HD tv). Typical family gathering!

I'm just excited to celebrate my favorite little mishap and the fact that he is here at all. I'm so thankful for him and really can't imagine life any other way. It feels like that is what most of my blogs come back to, but it's so true.

Though after attending the Wright kids party, I don't know if I am ready for the craziness that comes with kids birthday parties. It was chaos! But it was also a party for 3 kids and they have a big family. Hopefully we can keep the chaos to a minimum at Wy's party.

Yeah right.

Numbers 3 & 4

I posted that last blog too soon. Seriously, the day after I posted it I caught a glimpse of teeth 3 & 4.

Thank goodness my child won't look like a hillbilly for his pictures but a normal 1 year old with his 4 front teeth.

Downside of having 3 teeth coming in at the same time is that we are finally experiencing some of those normal teething symptoms. Yesterday he was a seriously crabby baby. He was whining or crying pretty much all day. At least he was also sleeping a lot. He was pulling his ears, chewing on everything (including the leg of the couch) and wanting lots of attention.

I'm so spoiled, any crabby day throws me off! I'm thankful my kid is so easy going, but it has not prepared me for the days when he's not in a good mood.

I am excited about the teeth though! Despite it meaning he really is getting bigger and is now officially no longer a baby. He is still wonderful!

#2

As in tooth #2, not poop. :)

It's true, at 11 months old Wyatt is finally getting his second tooth. In this department he is a little behind. Everyone was saying that since #1 came so late the others would be right behind and would come in quick. Not so much.

It has taken a full week for that sucker to finally pop through. Last week I started to notice a little bump and then a little bit of white poking through, but couldn't feel anything when I ran my finger along his gums.

Then today, I saw a corner! Overnight it seems this little tooth has decided to show up full force.

Now the fact that it took so long for this second tooth to show up is not the entire reason for this post...the bigger reason is the location of this particular tooth.

Again, everybody says teeth come in twos. Obviously not with my kid. Everybody says the bottom TWO will be the first to show up. Not with my kid. Instead his bottom left tooth came in first and now his TOP LEFT tooth is coming in.

My child is going to look like a hillbilly.

And just in time for his one year pictures.

Can you see me shaking my head?

And teeth are totally changing how his smile looks! I like his toothless old man smile, it's cute! With teeth, he's really starting to look like a little boy. The big boy clothes, almost walking, and full head of hair doesn't help either. I do miss the teeny baby days, but man is he fun as a toddler!

Have I mentioned he gives the best hugs? No, well I'm just going to have a write another post on another day all about that.

New Stuff

Ok, I know I haven't been posting enough, but really after work and time with Wy I feel like I don't have 2 seconds for myself lately!

But there have been some big and exciting developments lately!!

One, I ordered the invites for Wy's 1st birthday party. It's so crazy to me that my baby is turning one! this year went by so fast. I can't wait though to have a party, watch him eat cake, and help me open gifts. We are having a little party with friends and close family at my dad's house. Simple BBQ food and a few little games and projects for the other older kiddos.

Two, Wyatt is close to walking!! AH! He has been pulling himself up on furniture and scooting around holding on to things for a couple months now. But this week he has been making big strides towards walking on his own. The other night I was sitting on the floor while he was playing like I usually do. While sitting responding to a text I had received I realized he was standing next to me. Not unusual since he is always using me to pull himself up when I am sitting on the floor. Then I realized I hadn't felt his hand on my shoulder for support in getting from the floor to his feet. And then I realized he wasn't holding on to me at all! He was standing next to me with no help happily watching me type a text message. Until I freaked out and accidentally bumped him enough to knock him over. He did it though! All on his own he stood up and was standing next to me with no help.

Wy also has discovered that he can push his truck/walker across the room. It's so much fun to watch him almost run across the living room to bang his truck against the wall...seems like all the noise is the best motivation to bother walking at all. :) So it seems like any day now he's just going to walk off without thinking about what he's doing. Ugh, he's such a big boy!

He does all kinds of goofy stuff now, he dances (bobs more like), he pretends to talk on the phone, he sings himself to sleep...

By the way, something very cute: listening to Wy sings himself back to sleep in the middle of the night; something not cute at all: listening to Wy scream bloody murder in the middle of the night because he doesn't want to drink milk he wants to drink formula. Very annoying.

He is such a joy to me though, even when he's making me crazy. I got a ton of pictures printed from shutterfly recently and brought a handful of them to work so I can have him all over my cube. It makes me happy to see his smiling little face!

Lots to look forward to in the coming months; first steps, first words, first birthday party, first visit with his grandparents from Florida (more on that later)...so much is going on all the time.

Honestly the only thing I am sad about or regret is that I am not able to be home with him full time while he is going through all this. I always thought I would be able to be a stay at home mom for the first couple years with each of my kids. The best I can do at this point is enjoy every second I have with him and hope that someday I get to watch more of the process with my future kids!

TaDa!

Today I hung a shelf in the bathroom and put some vinyl wall art up in my room...

Yes, it's absolutely taking forever for me to get things up and in order here. We have lived in this apartment since March and I'm still working on getting the place set up. It's been really hard to get motivated to tackle these projects after working all week and having Wyatt to chase after any time I'm actually home.

But I'm hoping to be here in this apartment at least another year so I'm not worried that it's taking so long to get things looking the way I want them to. I finally got new bookshelves last month and the difference is amazing. They look so much better!! I've also been making sure to print pictures and actually frame and hang them more often so there's lots to look at on the walls now.

The biggest challenge at this point is going to be keeping Wy's toys in check and weeding through and throwing out things I don't need or want. I have a good handle on Wy's toys at the moment, while I was shopping for bookshelves at IKEA I got him a toybox to keep in the living room, makes cleaning up so easy cause i can just throw everything in the box and put the lid on...InstaClean!! Motivating myself to look through a bunch of stuff I really don't care much about is a whole other thing. I have all these boxes of stuff I haven't looked at in forever. It's such a hassle to sort through things and find places for the things I keep and haul out the junk I don't want.

I'm going to push through though, I want this to be a nice place for me and Wy. And I want to simplify my life. I don't need to be carrying all this junk around any more. It's time for a new start.

Games

Today was a great day!

Since it was a day off, Wy and I were able to get some shopping done and spend a lot of time playing today.

His little tooth (and probably a bunch that haven't made appearances yet) is still giving him some pain, but honestly it's been a pretty easy thing so far. I have noticed he's been more tired than before and in general a bit crabby, but that could also be him just starting to voice his opinions more. :)

I am so impressed with him every single day lately. He is starting to do a lot more mimicking so playing is getting more fun. He thinks it's funny when you click your tongue back at him when he does it. He started to play with shape sorting toys while he was visiting the grands (as Gramma Lori has dubbed she and my dad). He loves trying to chase after the dogs and cat over there too.

I also discovered how much he likes to be chased now! Just last week he was tearing around the apartment and I started to follow him so he wouldn't get into anything icky (like the litter box). Once he realized I was behind him he would laugh, crawl away real fast then stop and look back to make sure I was still following him. It's so funny.

Today we spent a lot of time wrestling, which pretty much just means rolling around on the floor. It's so great to hear him laughing out of control when he tackles me. He was also laughing at my impressions of animals while we read Moo, Ba, La La La. I swear he was trying to make some of the noises too.

Which reminds me that I think he's been starting to sing along to things! Sometimes you'll just hear him making noise that isn't his normal grunty noises or him laughing or trying out words and it only happens when music is on. He has this little nursery rhyme music player from the grands that he plays with all the time now; he turns it on and then holds it up to his ear and sings along (kind of). He also has a nursery rhyme singing book thing from his Grandma Rebecca that he is starting to sing along with. He had to master turning the pages first though. :)

Seriously my kid seems really smart. And yes, I know every parent says that. Which is why I added "seems" to the sentence.

More than anything I am just really in love and proud of my son. He is growing so fast! And he's more amazing every day.

Seriously being a mom is the best job ever.