Observations of a Mom In Love...: It's so much fun to be ONE!

Sorry for the delayed post everyone...today was one of those days that followed one of those weekends.

Although he doesn't have much to compare it to, I think it's safe to say that Joshua had a pretty nice first birthday. Here are a few highlights from the past several days...please forgive the laundry list due to the late hour at which I find myself typing.

Our birthday celebration started around 6:30 am with Joshua's television debut. OK, really it was just his picture on the morning news show, but it was pretty neat to see his smiling pumpkin picture up there as we awoke on Thursday morning. We had sent his picture with an email to the news folks telling them about Joshua's love of the weather segments. That got a special mention along with their happy birthday wishes. And I took a picture...of course.

Joshua had a blast at Trail of Treats. There were many characters there and he wasn't afraid of ANY of them, much to my surprise. Maybe our visit for Santa pictures won't be so traumatic after all. He reached up for a man dressed as Ronald McDonald, although I have absolutely no idea how he would know who that is. Maybe it's just the clown that was alluring. He had no problems posing with the lion costumed person who was part of our room theme and kept reaching out to either touch the lion's nose or give him a hug.

New skill alert----- Joshua has learned to clap his hands. All of a sudden during Trail of Treats, he started clapping his hands together when he liked something. I nearly fell over. No one else there thought it was nearly as big of a deal as I did.

Our little gathering on Thursday night was really nice. I wish I had a way to post the videos because I think you'd all get much more enjoyment out of seeing it, but Joshua seemed to enjoy himself. After we sang "Happy Birthday" to him, he clapped and smiled, so he must have approved. No cake ended up on his face because, frankly, he didn't eat much. He just seemed to smash the cake and squish it between his fingers, then smeared it all over the tray of his high chair. But not much was consumed. The few little bites we gave him to try weren't met with much of a reaction at all. He was very interested in presents, so this gave us a little taste of what Christmas is going to be like in a few short months.

Friday morning we headed to Lewistown to share a similar celebration with my family. Everyone seemed to enjoy seeing all of Joshua's new tricks. I thought that, with the practice of Thursaday, the cake might either get eaten or really smashed into his face in an extreme kind of way, but he did the Play Doh routine again. He maybe had 3 or 4 bites, but not much more than that. I surely hope it wasn't that my cake didn't taste good.

The highlight of Friday was that we really saw some increase in Joshua's attempt to mimic words and talking. We were playing at my mom and dad's house and Joshua was looking up at the pictures that they have on a shelf in their living room. Joshua kept staring at the pictures, several of which were of Libby. So I kept asking him who that was. When I said "Lib-by" to him a few times, he looked right at the picture and said "Ibby". I nearly died. Wouldn't you figure that this child will not say "mama" to save his life, but "Ibby" comes rolling right out onto the pages of his baby book. Sunday's word was "baby". The jury is still out as to whether he really meant "baby" or whether this was just a new type of babbling that he learned. In any event, the talking and chattering is picking up. This is a lot of fun to witness!

Saturday Joshua spent the day with Nana, Poppy and Aunt Libby while Jason and I enjoyed a good butt kicking at the PSU game. I'm glad that we enjoyed such a nice day at Beaver Stadium pre-game during our little tailgate party with Stephanie because the actual game didn't go so well for these PSU fans. But we won't linger on that topic.

Sunday Jason and I worked on some child-friendly arranging in our office to make room for all of the toys that we are buried under (and those that Santa will likely be bringing our way in a few short months). What started as a minor "do-this-while-he's-napping" project ended up taking me several hours and Jason about five to complete. But Joshua now has a safe place to play which is a good thing. We officially retired the exersaucer (which has served no real purpose over the past three months other than to block the entrance to an electrical outlet that Joshua seems particularly intrigued by) and replaced it with a new toy box that Aunt Sheri got for him for his birthday. A very nice change indeed.

Joshua had his first drink of whole milk on Sunday and wasn't too impressed. We'll keep working on it. But if milk had to sustain life, I'd be concerned.

Tomorrow afternoon is Joshua's big 1 year checkup which includes a bunch of shots, so that's no good, but we will have updated stats for those of you keeping track. Any bets on whether we beat the 20 lb mark? The suspense will drive you batty, won't it?

I still marvel at the fact that our "baby" isn't such a "baby" anymore. Tonight as I was holding Joshua as he fell asleep, Jason asked me what I was going to do when he was too big to fall asleep in my lap anymore. I think my exact response was, "Well, it'll be a while before that happens, so I'm not going to think about it." How's that for denial? There's something very special about someone being small enough to cuddle up in your lap and just drift off to dreamland, and actually I enjoy it more now because he can stand in front of you and lift up those little arms as if to say "Mommy, will you please hold me?" That's pretty amazing, and I hope that the time will pass slowly before he's too big to climb in my lap for those last little while before bedtime. But after seeing how this past year flew by at warp speed, I think we'd better savor these moments before they're gone.

Enjoy the birthday pictures from Thursday. I'll post some of the ones from Friday tomorrow.

This was taken at 7:35 am on Thursday- his actual birth time. No time for a smile--- we were on a tight schedule.

As promised, here is a before shot of the cake. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it wasn't too bad for my first crack at making something that wasn't rectangular.