The First Birthday Party!

Now for the party itself...

We picked a 3:00 start time to allow for napping babies and I still had to wake Truman up for the festivities! I wanted to snap some family pictures before everyone arrived and T obliged, of course.

My new favorite family shot, mostly because of Truman's awesome smile.


My mom and Memaw flew in on Thursday evening and helped quite a bit with the preparations for Saturday. My mom used to run a small crafting business and her best seller was always her 'I let my grandkids walk all over me' sweat shirt, complete with footprints and puff paint. My brother and I were her footprints until she made a rubber mold of ours to use on multiple shirts. She also had another best seller with hand prints that said, 'My grandkids can't keep their hands off me.' So now that she has a grandkid of her own she decided to bring back her old craft of choice, going vintage with the hand and foot prints. Pretty cute, huh?


I wanted to get a shot of T with all his grandmas---this one comes close, with Lois in the picture. But great-grandma H was off to the side in her preferred chair so we are one grandma short. Still, don't you love the waves?


Ah, there she is! Great-Grandma H came down from Madison for the party. So basically, Truman is one lucky dude with two great-grandmas and two regular grandmas who love him. :)


I feel like I have very few pictures of Truman with Nate's side of the family, probably because we see them so much so it's harder to remember to snap pictures. But that just isn't right and I decided we need to be better about getting that side of the fam in some photos. Here is a classic one when Great-Grandma asked Truman to sit on her lap and he flat out shook his head NO in response.


Me and my big one year old boy. He's only happy because he's holding Missouri Grandma's camera.


Still loves those open-mouthed kisses!


Truman in his chair---a gift from MO Grandma. I helped her pick the color of course, and we got it from Land of Nod. I love the Pottery Barn Kids version, too, but they only had cute colors for girls if you ask me.


Very excited for the festivities to begin, obviously.


Then the guests of honor started to arrive! We had five other kids besides Truman come to the party and it was like one giant play date, complete chaos at times but SO much fun to watch all the babies interact. This is the one and only Charlotte, who was born on the very same day as Truman just hours before him. So basically, they are like twins or betrothed or something and I just love little Charlie.


Isabella is 13 months old and was quite the social butterfly! I think she loved Truman's toys more than any other baby there and she obviously loved her water bottle, too. :)


Mister Eli, is Andrea's big nine monther. Don't you just love that grin? His daddy is a firefighter and hence the adorable sweater vest. Eli was the youngest at the party and he totally held his own with the older kiddos!


And good old Henry--Truman's daycare buddy who is 16 months old and a total ham. He is so much fun to watch because he's all over the place and it's quite entertaining to observe his parents chase after him! Erin and Dave make toddler-hood look easy although I'm told it's pretty exhausting. :)

Ryan was the other kiddo who came but somehow he managed to dodge my camera all day, the little bugger! He was the oldest at about 20 months and was right with Henry, all over the place.

A glimpse of the giant play date. :)


Pals Henry and Truman working on 'sharing', just like they do at daycare.


In my head I had a 'to-do' list during the party, including: eat food, watch video, open gifts, sing to Truman and eat cupcakes. I was worried that the time would slip away from us before we could do any of those things and then babies would have to leave before we got anything done---luckily we stayed on task and got them all accomplished!

The video: when I announced we were going to show a video my beloved mother-in-law asked, 'Of what?! The birth?!' Ha, not quite....but it's funny to me that this photo of the video sort of does look like he was just born. It's actually his first bath but whatever. :)


Erin and Henry checking out the video.


Lois realizing this video is not actually of Truman being born, thank goodness.


Charlotte could care less about the stupid video. She has a chair and a scarf and is totally pimping.


Next! Opening gifts. Truman was getting a little fussy at this point so I had to hurry but I know T loved it. Mostly he loved chewing on the cards, but whatever.


Seriously, we are so lucky to have such great friends and family. It reminded me of my baby showers----when I just felt overwhelmed with everyone's generosity. I can't help but think of children less fortunate, without this ridiculous amount of toys, and feel honored that we are so blessed. I promise to teach Truman to be grateful for his blessings and not a greedy, spoiled brat---because I want him to know that he's a very lucky boy to have so many nice things. End of tangent on parenting...


Yep, definitely wearing out.


Andrea snapped pics for me, using my camera, and I just love this one.


And then finally, time for the cupcake! I wanted to save the tee shirt if possible so we stripped T down shirtless. We all sang to him and I guarded the flame before blowing out the candle for Truman.


And then? Truman was the most cautious, tentative baby with this treasured cupcake----it took him FOREVER to actually eat the darn thing. Silly boy:)




But once he got the hang of it, he was all about that sugar. Probably my favorite pic right here---showing how happy our baby was on his big day.


Definite sugar high.


I am still glad we did the red velvet cupcake but boy, the first dirty diaper post party was absolutely frightening! Enough said. :)


Happy Birthday, Truman!!


An edited video to show the highlights of the 'cake smashing'.


We had to grab the classic shot of us three ladies with our boys---Truman still shirtless and looking rather portly.


And then, I remembered one more thing I wanted to do at the party: attempt a hat photo-op! I knew it would probably be a disaster but I figured even one or two decent pics would be worth it. Truman was still too messy to wear his shirt, even after we tried to wipe him off. And so he remained topless---which makes these pictures even more hilarious.


Uh-oh!!


The birthday babies were NOT happy! Please note the clasped hands on the side of this picture---I'm pretty sure that is Charlotte's dad, as if to say, 'Sorry, Charlie. You are on your own for this one.'


Truman trying to crawl away from the horrendous hat that attacked him----and Eli's face in this picture makes me laugh every time. He is genuinely concerned with his buddy Truman here. Isabella and Henry could care less.


And that is a watered-down version of the party! It was so hard to edit pictures down from 450 but I managed. The party itself was SO much fun, I was a little sad when it was over---that post-party let down feeling is so lame. But I loved how everything turned out, it was hilarious to watch all the kids play together, and chatting with their parents and our families was exactly what we needed to celebrate making it the first year.

Next year we'll try the hats again and hope for better results:)