C's First Birthday Review (Part 1)

October 4th - C's 1st Birthday!

I cannot believe its been a whole year already, although it feels like C has always been a part of our family, parts of me cannot accept that my baby is now a toddler!  It's amazing how much he's grown from a cuddly lump to an active, opinionated, silly little person.  Before I know it he'll have a girlfriend and will be driving...

On the day of his actual birthday, we had big plans to get photos taken at the Picture People at our local mall, and to go to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.  Before we left to get his photo taken, he opened his present, a Gund Birthday Bear (purchased at Fun Buy The Pound), so that it could be featured in the photo.

The photos went great, I had a groupon for photos, so now I have a million copies of  one of the photos.  They also offered me a deal where you get the CD of pictures and a 3 photo frame for $100 (the CD is normally $150 alone).  I'm really impressed with the quality of the photos, and the photographer did a great job.  We've never done a studio photo session with C (his Godmother does an amazing job and takes greats photos of him in action-but she lives 4 hours away).  We did some cute traditional ones (he has the birthday bear and a Number 1), and then we did a fun batch of C being a nerd baby (like father, like son).

After the photo shoot he was pretty tired and ended up napping so long we didn't get a chance to go to the Children's Museum.  We did play for a bit at my mom's store, Fun Buy The Pound, which I think was probably equally exciting for him.

Once M got home it was time for birthday fun!  We opened presents (he was super spoiled):
-That's Not My Kitten by Fiona Watt (purchased at Penguin Bookshop)
-Cat by Matthew Van Fleet and Brian Stanton (also purchased at Penguin Bookshop)

-Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat Are You Waking Up? and Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat Are You Going to Sleep?  by Bill Martin Jr., Michael Sampson and Laura J. Bryant (Purchased on Amazon)
-Go Pitt: My First Pitt Words by Connie McNamara (also purchased at Penguin Bookshop)
-Edushape Baby Xylophone (also purchased at Fun Buy The Pound)
-Alex My Busy Town (purchased at Fun Buy The Pound)


After all the presents we had dinner as a a family - Vegetable Risotto (One of C's favorites).  Followed by the first of many cakes for the weekend.  He very carefully ate the cake first with a fork, but then realized it was yummy and using his hands was much faster.  This cake I kept simple (yellow cake mix, with some Betty Crocker Whipped Cream icing and some sprinkles.) - the next blog post will have a more elaborate smash cake.  I bought Fat Daddio's Anodized Aluminium Round Cake Pan -4" by 2" to bake the cake in.  My advice is if you make your own smash cake, do a couple tests with the pan, as it is not a standard size and you won't know how much to put in or how long to bake.  The first cake I made him, did not cook in the middle, so I had to make a second.  I served the cake on the plate from the Child to Cherish Happy Birthday Ceramic Plate, Bowl and Cup set-Blue. I'm really excited to use this plate set for C's (and future babies) birthdays.  It's such a sweet set.

October 5th - Birthday Bonfire

Friday night we hosted a Birthday Bonfire for friends.  It was the perfect night, we didn't even need a sweatshirt.  We had a variety of food, meatball sliders, veggies, hummus, cookies, and cupcakes. I made sure we had some pumpkin beer and made some pumpkin cupcakes (what's the fun of having an October baby if you can't have some pumpkin flavored food!)  He had a cupcake and made a giant mess, but really enjoyed everyone singing Happy birthday to him.  Overall, it was a really nice relaxing and fun evening, I wish I had some more pictures, but it really hard to get photos in the dark!