one year

Now that the parties have been partied, the gifts have been opened, the cake has been eaten looked at as if its an alien, it's official. Jude's birthday was Wednesday, November 11th, and I took the day off and spent the day cleaning, packing, and telling Jude his birth story while he completely ignored me.

That evening, my small group girls came over and we had a sweet little birthday party for Judeabug. Remember me telling you about my small group girls? Three of us have been their leaders/teachers/mentors...I'm not really sure what exactly the role is...since they were in 6th grade. Since they're now in 10th grade, we've known those sweet girls for 4 years. To announce to them that I was pregnant, we sent them on a scavenger hunt to look for baby related items. When I was on bedrest, they came to the house and threw me a surprise baby shower and gave us some of the most thoughtful gifts ever. During the summer, Brittany would come to the Pregnancy Center and watch Jude for a few hours so I could get work done, and Kayla, her brother, and her Mom have watched Jude on several of our date nights. So it seemed fitting to celebrate his 1st birthday with these girls, since they're such a big part of our lives.

I blew up some balloons to have around the house and realized - Jude has never seen a balloon. It's so fun to be able to introduce someone to something that seems mundane, but that actually blows them away. And thus a friendship was born. A friendship consisting of Jude pouncing on the balloon, and the balloon not popping. That might just have been Jude's favorite part of the entire party.

Then Jude opened up his gifts - and if you've ever been to a one year old's birthday party, then you know that means Mom and Dad opened gifts and exclaimed with loud excitement over each one. He got some blocks, a fun bongo that talks to you in English OR Spanish, a car that plays "Funky Town" (to which he dances a super cute dance), and an Indie Rock ABC book that I'm not cool enough to understand.

And then....it was cake time! Personally, I'm not a big fan of giving my one year old a sugar high at 8:00pm when he's already pretty riled up from those crazy balloons - but Shawn and I compromised and got him a little cake from Whole Foods ('cause the sugar high won't be as high if it's organic?! I know....). We asked them to write "Happy Birthday" on it, but the lady behind the counter was kind of grumpy, and it ended up looking like, "Happy Birafdadfasdf."

We put Jude in his highchair, lit a candle, sang Happy Birthday (or Happy Birafdadfasdf), set the cake in front of Jude to smash, consume, tear through, gobble up, and he....

...stared at it. Then he took his chubby pointer finger and poked at the flower on top. He then made a face as if to say, "oh chocolate covered sugar and egg mixture, you disgust me," and turned his head away.

Because an organic sugar high is just fine for Mommy and Daddy at 10:00pm, we definitely devoured it once Jude went to sleep.

Even though I pulled the camera out and set it on the kitchen table so I would take plenty of pictures, I got so wrapped up in the fun that I forgot to take pictures. Jill, however, did take a few with her camera phone - and like any good friend I'll steal them from her facebook.

A fun drum/musical kit Shawn's been eyeing for months now. Jude especially loves the drum sticks, and I think I'll leave teaching him how to drum up to Shawn.

Logan helping Jude open his present! Also, I have to confess something. When I went to wrap Jude's gifts, I realized I didn't have any non-Christmas paper left. My birthday is December 30th, so I have this weird thing about NOT wrapping birthday gifts in Christmas paper. SO...all I had was this plain brown paper. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't even have enough to cover the gifts entirely. Nonetheless - I wrapped them as best as I could, grabbed some crayons, and let Jude color for the first time. We wrote his name, we wrote out "love," and we practiced learning circles and stripes.

That's right. I pretended my pitiful wrapping job was on purpose and a moment of Mommy Genius Creativity.

A dump truck and blocks!

...and Jude's look of disgust at the cake. "You dare to place that non-nutritional waste of flour on my plate?"

Happy Birafdadfasdf Jude, Happy Birafdadfasdf.