Birthday party overload

I know that not everyone likes to throw birthday parties for their kids (especially when the kid doesn’t even know what’s going on), but since we don’t have family to get together with informally, we decided to have a small party to celebrate the fact that we survived a year of parenthood. But I totally understand why we were only allowed friend birthday parties every other year; I’m exhausted!

I picked a “theme” many moons ago after being inspired by my amazing cousin, Kimba, and then running across some great ideas online. I’m not normally a very creative person—meaning, I cannot come up with an idea myself, but I can copy someone else. Mostly. So I was excited when I found a company that designs the invitations, decorations, etc. and then sells the PDF that can be personalized and printed at home. Awesome! (Except that we quickly discovered that our printer really eats the ink). Not awesome. Suffice it to say, I spent the bulk of the past few days decorating and baking and shopping.

The theme was “bouncy balls,” I guess. It ended up being more polka dots than anything else, but as it turns out, there’s a lot of stuff out there that fits that theme. Here’s the cute pennant banner and dots for my little boy. And because Target has wrapping paper that matched the theme, I wrapped the square wall hangings above our TV. I’ve always talked about wrapping these with Christmas paper during the holidays, but now I realize that it takes longer than it’s worth.

And now for the big reveal…

 

But the biggest deal was the homemade ball pit. As Chris was putting the balls in the pool this morning, he made fun of me because there was only one layer of balls. Not really a pit, in his opinion. But because we had a bunch of babies coming, I knew it would be perfect.

Miles seemed to like it when we put him in there.

But he liked it even more when his friends joined him.

That boy stayed in there longer than any one else. In fact, I left the ball pit in tact so that I can pull it out tomorrow after church.

But what would a birthday party be without cake?

Funny story. I put Chris in charge of the still camera while I was holding the video camera and giving Miles the cupcake (with candle). I don’t know why I didn’t ask anyone to record the milestone for me, but oh well. We lit the candle and started singing as I put the cupcake in front of Miles. At which point Chris chimes because he thought I was going to leave the lit candle in front of the baby, all while I’m trying to video. So we actually stopped singing so that I could explain to Chris that I’m not that stupid, and then we started singing again. I would include the video, but as you can imagine, it’s rather shaky. As far as the cupcake goes, Miles wasn’t really sure what to do. I was worried about this happening, so we practiced eating cupcakes yesterday after I baked them. I let him try some, and he really liked it. Today…not so much.

Notice that I forgot to unwrap the cupcake. First time parenting is tricky. But even with the paper off, he wasn’t sure what to make of the icing. Look how gingerly he is picking at it. No more doubting his pincer grasp capabilities here.

 

So after trying a few small bites, he decided to do this:

Whose child is this? We do not throw cupcakes on the floor in this family! That’s practically Rule # 1.

He did eventually try some more, but still not a big fan. I’m glad I didn’t make a bigger cake for him because that would have been a much bigger waste of time.

After cupcakes, Miles and Chris opened some presents. And I just can’t resist including this picture because isn’t it mandatory to have a meltdown at your birthday party? I’m not sure why he was crying, but it’s probably because he loved his present so much that it brought him to tears.

Overall we had a great time celebrating the birth of our little boy. The only bad part is the clean-up. Still haven’t taken down the decorations. Might leave them up for a while. Perhaps until we move.

Perhaps.