One Year Old part 1: The Party

Despite Danny having surgery on Monday we decided to have William's party on his birthday that Saturday. Needless to say, it was an exhausting week, but a fun party! Our building has a fun Social Room, so we decided to take advantage. William's day started out at 5:15 (if anyone has any tips on how to make an EARLY riser sleep in a little, I'm all for (and desperate for) suggestions!), and he was due for a nap about the time the party started, but he was a trooper. Thank you Grandpa (my dad) for bringing your camera and taking such great pictures. My camera was in my pocket the whole time, and I only remembered to take 1 picture!

Cousins Lincoln and Jackson were pals and tried to help me keep William entertained in the exciting wrapping paper. His family and friends were sure nice to him! He got some fun toys and great books!
I would say this picture is pretty explanatory of the afternoon for William: lot's of yawns and a runny nose... Here is cute cousin Thomas exploring one of William's new toys.

One of William's favorite presents was a Fisher Price airplane. It was a hit! Leo and Adam always give the coolest presents!

Hanging out with Grandpa

The cake:

***Thank you familyfun.com for the idea! And thank you Andrea for the help!!***

This picture is a little embarrassing, but it was so funny. I wish they had caught Charlotte's facial expression rather than mine... I forgot to warn her to get her finger out of his mouth quick when she put frosting in his mouth... Those teeth are lethal!

William loves his two goofball uncles Tom and Ted...

They never fail to get him to laugh!

He was a little shy when everyone sang "Happy Birthday"

But he loved the attention!

Grandma giving him little snitches of frosting...

Thomas could hardly wait for a cupcake...

This is one of my favorite pictures...

Cousin Landon and Grandma

William did NOT want to sit in his chair, so his cake experience was rather calm and clean. I can't complain, because he was on my lap!

He sure loves frosting!

I love this boy!! Sorry for the sideways picture... After dinner people had to get to meetings or other things, while a few stayed to go swimming. As we were cleaning up before swimming, William put his head on my shoulder and was fast asleep! Poor guy was so tired!

We let him have a little snooze, and then we were off to the pool!

William still loves the pool! He loves to splash, be splashed, and put his face in the water. Thomas and William are such good buddies...it was fun to have them both in the water. Two little fishies! We were sad the other cousins couldn't make it to the pool!

Thanks to all our awesome family and friends for making it such a fun party! William is a lucky boy!

Please and Thank You!

I wish I had a picture for this post. I have a video on my phone, but can't get it off yet, so I'll just tell you about our day.

First of all, William still LOVES Baby Signing Time. He is such a vegitable when it's on. Here are our buddies Alex, Leah, and Hopkins.
We've been doing some of signs with William for months, with few results. He will do the sign for "all finished" when he's done eating, and just over the last few days he has started to do please, but that's all we've been able to get him to do so far. Yesterday I was watching him play, and he'd look at his hand, put it to his mouth, and pull it away, which looked an aweful lot like the sign for thank you. We've never done that sign to him, but just for fun I started to do it with him, and he'd sign it everytime I asked him to. It was pretty impressive that he picked that one up on his own, just from the show! (That's what I have a video of... to be posted soon)

The other highlight of my day today came at naptime. William has been really cuddly lately, which doesn't happen much. I think it might have something to do with the fact that he has chosen to be an early riser. Very early. But today when I went to put him down, I picked up his elephant and gave it to him like I always do. He usually puts his head on my shoulder for a minute and then leans toward the crib for me to lay him down (he is so good). But today when I handed him the elephant he pointed to the rocking chair. So I sat down and he snuggled right up to me and zonked out. It was the sweetest thing. I could watch this boy sleep all day.