Happy Birthday Baby-D!

I can't believe that my baby/buddy/best friend just celebrated his very first birthday! It's hard for me to believe for several reasons. The last year has gone by SO fast. It's been a very big year for our little family. It seems like Daniel has been in our family forever (it's hard to remember life before Daniel) yet at the same time, it seems like we brought him home from the hospital just last week. I am so grateful for our little Daniel. He is fun to play peek-a-boo with and to crawl around the house with him. I love hearing his little voice as he tries to figure out how to use it. Mike and I LOVE introducing him to new things like foods, technology and different places.  I look forward to many more celebrations with Daniel.

We had a fun day planned for Daniel. As is tradition, I made a special breakfast for him on his birthday. It's the family favorite, Monkey Bread. We made this sticky treat for a lot of birthdays growing up - and seeing as Daniel LOVES sugar and bread, it was the perfect breakfast for him.  I made sure that I had totally cleared my schedule for the day - including no errands to run - so that Daniel and I could spend the day doing what HE wanted to do. We crawled around, practiced walking and just played with toys and read books all day. While he napped, I made his cake.

Daniel LOVES lemon cake (from prior experience) so I made the top layer a lemon cake, and the bottom layer a red velvet cake.

One of Daniel's favorite meals is spaghetti. So, for his birthday dinner we had spaghetti. After dinner, we cleaned things up and invited the family over for cake and ice cream.  First, we opened presents. We figured he wouldn't be up for opening much of anything after eating cake and being covered in frosting.  It took a few presents, but he finally realized that the gifts were for him and he started getting into. Many thanks to his older cousins who helped him open up the surprises!

Some of his favorite things now include his Elmo cell phone (which is much cheaper than the 3 blackberry storms that he has destroyed in the last month) and his rocking horse.

While we sang "Happy Birthday" to Daniel, he grabbed at his cake (not the candle) and had his first taste. Everyone tried to sing kind of quietly and we finished the blowing out the candle with a very reverent "yay!" Sometimes if everyone cheers too loudly, it upsets Daniel and makes him cry. We didn't want that on his birthday!  

Then we buckled him in and let him go! He wasted no time at all.

 

And he even shared a little cake with me.