Happy Birthday Milo!

Our little man turned one today! Actually, if you want to be technical, his birthday isn't until 10:42 (if I remember correctly) tonight. But today is the day. We got up this morning and had our usual photo shoot. Those have gotten more difficult as he has gotten more mobile. Today was nearly impossible between the wiggles and him not feeling good because he's got several teeth coming in. We did manage to get some cute ones though:

This evening we decided to try round two with cupcakes. At his birthday party he just smashed it to bits and threw it all overboard into the floor for Kona. Tonight was not much different. You'll see in the series of photos below that he does have some icing on his face - Nathan got him to try a bite of it but he seemed less than impressed with the whole thing. 

We had a fun, low-key day with our little monkey today - it was so nice to go to church as a family, have lunch with some friends, and then come home for naps and some family time. It's hard to believe it's been a year. I was snuggling with him this evening and with his head laying up near my shoulder, his feet were at my knees! When he was born he fit up on my chest with his feet just at my waist...  He's quite a "waver" these days too.  He waves at everyone, smiles at them, etc. The other day as we were going into Target there was a woman coming out and he waved and smiled and she stopped and told me that he made her day which I thought was so sweet. He's pulling up and cruising the furniture and will occasionally act interested in walking on his own, but we're not in a hurry! (We're not pushing him over either but we're not rushing the walking - he's plenty fast when he crawls!)  He's eating a few more table foods but still acts uninterested in lots of things, so we just keep offering and assume that, like with the introduction of cereal/baby food, he'll eat when he's ready.  In the meantime he is certainly not starving.

I'm realizing I haven't done a great job of documenting his first year. I can't remember a lot of his "firsts"...we didn't even get a family picture on his birthday. BUT, we do have a lot of other pictures, and lots of fun memories of our first year with our firstborn! He's such a sweet, happy baby and we are definitely blessed beyond measure!

Thankful Thursday

Late again, I know.  But don't even act surprised.  Everyone knows that's how I roll these days. 

On to business.  Things I have been thankful for this week:

• A fun birthday party for Milo
• A husband who is creative and loves to go all out for birthdays (and any other celebration)
• Looking forward to a vacation
• A much needed mani/pedi all by myself on Thursday (my first one since before Milo was born - YIKES!)
• A happy, healthy almost one year old who is learning new things every day!

The big party was last weekend, it'll get it's own post later.  For now, here's a sneak peek at the preparation - and seriously, if the look on Milo's face in that last one isn't pure joy, I don't know what is.  He is just the smiliest baby!

Family Day Friday!

Today the Daddy had the day off and we went to the zoo!  Grammi and Papa got us a zoo pass and today was our first time to get to use it.  We will definitely be using it often!  Because we have a pass, I didn't feel like after we'd been there only an hour or so we had to stay to "get our money's worth" even though it was super hot because hey, we can come back for an hour every day next week if we want to!  

The new elephant habitat is amazing! And we got to see the baby elephant which was still fairly small, as far as elephants go.  

Milo getting ready for the zoo - as you'll see he spend most of the visit chewing on this strap.  Teething might just be the death of us around here...

Mama and baby elephant. Mama's name is Asha and baby's name is Malee, the third elephant in the pic is Asha's sister, Chandra. (Daddy's name is Sneezy and he lives in Tulsa.) They were spraying themselves and the baby with mud here:

Mama and Auntie never let the baby far from them - most of the time they were on either side of her:

Milo thinks the elephants are pretty cool:

See?  She's still little for an elephant...although when she was born she weighed 304 lbs.  YIKES!

Here the baby was trying to climb over this log but got high centered for a few minutes.  She finally got one of her back knees up a little bit and then Mama or Auntie came over and gave her a little trunk to rear support and helped her on over...only for her to turn around and go back over it the other way:

The baby was so cute playing in the water.  She just rolled around and splashed and looked like she was having a big old time:

Milo still thinks the elephants are cool and is still unwilling to give up the strap:

Milo and Mama with a gorilla:

I believe this was a black bear.  We saw the grizzlies too but they were pretty far away and lying in the shade (for which I cannot blame them as they are wearing heavy winter coats and it was HOT out there):

We stopped through the children's zoo for just a few minutes to let Milo cool his toes in the little stream:

In spite of the warm day, we had a fabulous time.  We loved spending time as a family and can't wait to go back to see more animals!

Update

For the three people who read this and are NOT my mother or sisters, here's what we've been up to lately!

N had to go to Las Vegas for a business trip so Milo and I packed up and headed for my mom and dad's house for a couple of days.  

Milo picking "beans" at Grammi & Papa's:

 Sitting in his cousin's lawn chair on the patio - just his size!

Having some lunch...

The next six pics are some that my sister took while we were sitting on the patio watching the girls swim.  I love these pics of Milo!

Grammi bought us a dump truck - as you can see it was a big hit!

Poor Livi - she was so worn out after a couple hours in the pool she fell asleep waiting for dinner.  This was not staged, she really is fast asleep!  Stayed there for about 30 minutes until they finally had to wake her.

  

Milo wore big boy pjs for the first time - no feet, two pieces.  Makes me a little sad...

On Saturday, Mom, Aud, Steph, Scott, and I ran the "I Like Ike" 5k in Denison.  Scott smoked us all, the Clay ladies ran it in right at 41 minutes.  And it was HOT.  Also, Ains ran the "fun run" which I think was about a half mile.  

And to cap off our trip, Milo learned to climb stairs. I believe the look on his face says it all.  I am in so much trouble.

We had a great time visiting my family (and N's) but we were VERY glad to see the Daddy on Friday night and we were glad to get home on Sunday.