Birthday Recap

First, here are Ryder's 12 month stats ....

20 lbs, 8 oz. (25th percentile - he only gained a couple oz. since last time)

32" inches tall (95th percentile - he is now in the long and lean category!)

Head size was 75th percentile

Ryder's first birthday has come and gone. It was a busy week and it took a few days for us to recover from it! With his party last weekend and a yard sale this weekend, I am exhausted.

Ryder's birthday was a fun day! We really wanted to spend a day just as a family, reminiscing about the past year and of course the actual day of his birth too. What a wonderful year we have had and what a blessing Ryder is. We just love him to pieces and are so lucky to be his parents.

I typically like to have a plan. Not that I can't be spur of the moment, but when it comes to special occasions and holidays, I like to have it planned out ahead of time. Otherwise, we tend to end up pondering what to do all day. I didn't want this to happen on his birthday. Well, the day came and we didn't really have much of a plan. We knew we wanted to go to the park (the idea was to have a picnic, but that didn't happen). Other than that, we didn't plan anything else ahead. We ended up at the zoo, for lack of anything else to do. We ended up having a great time! Ryder really enjoys the animals and the weather was just perfect. Let's just get to the pictures!

Birthday morning! Scarfing down blueberry pancakes.

Presenting Ryder with his "big" present.

Checking it out ...

It was fun for a minute ....

And then he was over it and pretty much wants nothing to do with it. We could keep it for the chance that someday he'll have interest in it, but I think we'll put it on craigs list.

Haha, such a funny picture! We tried all day to get him to open his presents. He just wasn't into it.

Forget opening presents .... he'd rather play with kitchen utensils.

At the park! He loves to swing!

Love the sassy face!

This boy has a shoe obsession. He doesn't need any toys. He is happy to play with shoes all day long. It doesn't matter who's shoes or what kind of shoe. He loves to toss them around, crawl with them on his hands, put them in his mouth (EWW) and most recently, he loves to put them on his feet and walk around in them. It is sooooo funny!

Trying out daddy's sunglasses. :)

This is at the zoo -

Normally I wouldn't let Ryder play on something like this, but since there were no other kids around, we did. Public play areas GROSS ME OUT! I don't think I will ever allow him to play in the mall play area .... ewwww. Anyway, he absolutely loves crawling through tunnels ...

so he was super excited!

He went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth .... he could probably stay busy in there for hours.

Checking out the turtle shell.

We asked him where the monkey was and he pointed to it - so smart!

Then he pointed to one up high that we hadn't even seen. So cute!

I like this picture

We had planned to stay home and cookout for dinner, but my parents really wanted to see him for his b-day since they weren't going to be at his party. So we decided to go out to dinner with them.

Couldn't get a good picture of the 3 of us ...

And to celebrate this big day - his first ice cream! I hope to keep him away from a lot of sweets for as long as possible, but of course there will be occasional exceptions.

He LOVED it! And after a couple bites, he grabbed the spoon from me and started feeding himself as if he had been doing it all his life! I had no idea he even knew how to use a spoon! It was really funny.

Little pro ...

Big bite! Good thing half of it fell off the spoon. ;)

He quickly moved from his tiny bowl to the big pizookie - smart kid! I really didn't intend for him to have more than a couple bites, but watching him feed himself was just so funny. After this pic I decided to take a video. While fidgeting with the camera, the server dropped the credit card back off and swiped the rest of the cookie right out from under him! The rest of us were slightly distracted and she grabbed it so quick and ran off, that it took us all a second to realize what had happened~ I was MAD! I mean, who does that? You don't just grab the dessert (when there is still some left!) and run off without even asking if everyone is done! He was literally scooping his spoon in it too. Terrible service. I actually have it on video! Rudy was still annoyed the next day so he called and told a manager about it.

All in all, I'd say his birthday was great! He may not remember it, but we always will and of course we'll have to pictures and memories to share with him someday.

Day after his b-day:

I guess it's kind of too dark to tell, but in this picture he is diaper-less. Sometimes you just gotta be free!

Actually he had a little bit of redness - really the first time he has had any bit of a rash since we switched to cloth. Just giving his skin a little breathing time here. Turned out we had a little detergent build up in our diapers, which can be common with cloth - you've really got to make sure you have a good wash routine to be successful. A few extra rinses and I think we are good to go.

Well that's all for now. His party was a success and I can't wait to post about it! However, I am still having the whole my-computer-is-out-of-memory problem, so I have to erase things before I can upload more! I am running out of things to erase - hopefully going to get the external hard-drive SOON. Then I can erase everything!