A Baby Turns One

Happy 1st Birthday, Lucas!

We celebrated Lucas' first birthday by having a party at our house the weekend after his birthday. I decided to just invite the neighborhood kids and my friend Liz's kids and not my extended group of friends. I also thought about inviting Lucas' daycare friends since there are only a few, but then decided against that. We did invite Leda, his daycare provider, and she came. And also Grammy and Papa Bob of course. Anyway, silly me, this did not turn out to be a small party. Of course the whole neighborhood came and all the parents came with their kids, and our little shindig turned into about 40 people here in our house. It's April so we were all inside and it was a little chaotic.

The week of the birthday Lucas was feeling a bit under the weather and on the day of his party he was really in bad shape. Just all congested and coughing and stuffed up. If it wasn't his own party we would have stayed home. But he took a morning nap and rallied and did the best he could during his party. I have to say, I wish I acted that good when I feel terrible! He seemed to really like having a bunch of people in the house and I think he really liked the decorations (streamers) as well.

For some reason, despite the fact that I never once in Zach's 3 years planned an actual activity during his birthday party, I decided to plan not one, but three activities during Lucas' first birthday party. Since Easter was the week after the party we went with a loose Easter theme. We had pin the tail on the bunny, decorating of foam-y Easter shaped eggs, and then an actual big egg hunt outside on the lawn. The egg hunt was really the only thing the kids were interested in. They were all 4 or under and preferred to play with the boys' toys instead. During the party Zachary played host. He was absolutely adorable, carrying around a bowl of little chocolate cookies and asking everyone if they wanted one. He LOVES having friends over and entertaining. I think we need to host things more often at our house.

I made Lucas' birthday cake which was a coconut bunny sitting on edible grass. I also made a bunch of cupcakes since the bunny cake was actually kind of small. All the kids for some reason ended up sitting in the dining room at the "table" rather than at the kid tables I had set up in the foyer. They blew out the happy birthday candles on the cupcakes and I think they loved that. They were so cute and really well behaved. All the kids pretty much just wanted cupcakes and I cut up the bunny cake which the adults mainly had. One nice thing about having a mid-afternoon kid party -- you don't have to get a lot of food! We had snacky food but didn't worry about providing a meal.

After cake we went into the family room to open gifts. Not everyone came -- we wouldn't all fit and most of the kids were interested in still playing, so a smaller group came to watch Lucas unwrap the gifts. Lucas had different ideas, however. After a short time he decided he'd had enough so he and Kevin went into the other room and Zach helped me with the rest of the presents. What is so funny is that ever since this party, Zach has been super interested in the toys that Lucas got and will play with them whenever he's in the family room. I think he kind of thinks of them as his. Anyway, Lucas got some great presents and we are now completely overwhelmed with toys! I think it's time to start reorganizing!

The egg hunt was the final event of the party and we timed it so that we had it towards the end time of the party and people could just leave afterwards if they wanted to (it was outdoors and they already had their coats on -- so it worked well). Emily and I (but mostly her) had stuffed a ton of eggs the night before the party. And when I say stuffed, I mean it wasn't like she had one jelly bean in each egg. She had them filled with as many candies as would fit in the eggs. I mainly got candy that Zach liked, but then realized that like me (but unlike him) some kids do actually like things like peanut butter, so I ended up getting some wrapped peanut butter candies too. We had something like 120 (guesstimate -- we also may have had 200) eggs and Em hid them all over the front lawn during the party. When the kids went outside, I think they were psyched. Our front yard was awesome -- piles of eggs in the bushes, hanging on plants, in the mailbox, on the back of Grammy's car, etc. We had some shaped bunny eggs, some eggs with faces, some golden eggs -- and all had different things inside them. Some had money in them (just some change) because I always think it's fun to mix it up. :) I think everyone got eggs, including the little kids. Lucas got some eggs with Kevin's help but of course he donated the contents to Zach.

The hunt begins!

Check out my loot

It was really nice to have friends and family over to celebrate Lucas' birthday. I know that the first birthday is really just for the parents, but I know that everyone who came over truly cares about Lucas and I think they are lifelong friends. It meant a lot to us to have everyone here and to spend time with them. Thankfully our house was mostly back in order (home repairs will be another post)!

Helping Lucas find eggs too

Eggs on the steps!