The Big Birthday Party

Saturday after Jack's real birthday was the day of the big first birthday party.  At first, I had grand visions of a huge party with tons of children of friends and coworkers running around.  As I thought more, I realized that Jack has plenty of time for those kinds of birthday parties.  For his first birthday, I wanted something smaller, where everyone loved and cared for Jack and were excited to celebrate his big day.

We missed those of you who were too far away to join us, but we were so fortunate that all 6 of Jack's grandparents could make it for the party.  Brandi, Ryan and cousin Lincoln drove over from Fort Worth for the fun.  Uncle Greg showed up and so did Mommy's good friend, Mindy.

The party was a Curious George theme, picked out by Jack himself at Party City.  The adorable cake and smash cake were made by Hands on Cakes and were absolutely delicious!

 Balloons (or "bubbles" as Jack called them) are very popular with one-year-olds and toddlers.  Lincoln had one minor meltdown trying to tie one on his belt loop and only 2 balloons had to be retrieved from the ceiling!

 And here he is on his big day in his Elmo "You Had Me At Party" shirt:

A little spoiled are we??  Here's the little guy's stash.  Thanks everyone for the amazing gifts! 

Jack's attention span lasted long enough to open a few gifts. Mommy had fun opening the rest (mostly the clothes) after Jack went to bed.  He got a cool "Jack-sized" chair from Mommy, Daddy and Uncle Greg: 

And a wagon from Poppy and Gigi:

 And so many cool other presents from everyone else.  He's a lucky little boy.  Here we are opening presents - I think Max is just as interested as Jack:

Cousin Lincoln loved the airplane from Aunt Katy, Uncle Ian, and cousin Evan and Ben:

Here are Lincoln and Jack strolling around with their push toys:

Here are a few pics from around the party - Aunt Brandi and Uncle Ryan (with Uncle Greg in the background because somehow there are no other pictures of him):

Grandma, Mommy and Mindy:

And Jack with all 6 of his Grandparents:

Finally, its time for the fun part, the cake!  We got Jack his own mini "smash cake" to have fun with.  Here he is watching everyone sing Happy Birthday to him:

Taking a break from eating to smash some cake in Mommy's hair:

He was tentative at first, daintily sampling the cake:

Digging in a little more...

Now, I'm starting to get it...

Cake power!!

That was fun!

As you can imagine, this little munchkin went straight up to the bath.  Messy yes, but so worth it.  Thanks to everyone who made Jack's first birthday so special!

Happy First Birthday, Jack!

One year ago, I had a one-week old baby boy.  We lived in in a rental house Stamford, CT.  Tommy worked for Freeman Co. and I reviewed SEC documents for Deloitte in our National Office.  Obviously, a lot has changed in year.  We moved to Frisco, TX and bought a house.  Tommy now works for Microsoft and, while I still work for Deloitte, I'm back to auditing again.  By far, the best change has been our amazing little boy.  Yes, he has brought many challenges to our lives - we've been sleep deprived, frustrated, and worried more often I can remember.  He's also brought more joy to our lives than I thought possible.  I love his chubby cheeks, his giant smile and his huge dark-brown eyes.  I can't help but smile when he giggles while I tickle his feet or toddles towards me, arms outstretched for a hug.  I love watching him learn and explore the world around him and I can't wait to see what the years hold for him.

So on November 16th, we celebrated Jack's first birthday.  I bought cupcakes to take to daycare, and made cupcakes to celebrate at home.  Yes, it was probably a lot of sugar for a little boy who has never really eaten sweets, but you're only one once, right?

Here's our smiley man, excited about is cupcake:

Having fun with his birthday cupcake:

If you think he had fun with the cupcake, just wait until you see him with his birthday party smash cake.  Stay tuned!

Jack had his one-year checkup with Dr. Le on Thursday.  He wasn't happy about his two shots, but he didn't cry for long.  The doctor says he's a perfectly healthly, happy little boy.  We are going to start transitioning him from formula to whole milk soon - wish us luck!  Here are his one year stats:

     Height: 30 inches (50th percentile)
     Weight: 21 pounds, 4 ounces (25th percentile)
     Head: 18.5 inches (65th percentile)

And a little bit about Jack at one year old:

• He's been walking since a few days before he turned 10 months old.  At a year, he is still a little unstable, but almost always walks (or runs) instead of crawls
• He is always babbling.  Mostly still just noises, but he knows a few words.  He says "Mama," "Dada," "Baba" (bottle), "Nana" (banana), "Mumum" (when he wants to eat), "ball", "dat" (pointing at something he wants to know about), "bubble," "uh-oh" (usually holding something in his hand and getting ready to drop it).  He understands "bye-bye" and will start waving as soon as anyone says the word.  He waves bye-bye to Daddy every morning as he leaves for school.
• He loves music.  Whenever there is music playing, he rocks back and forth to the rhythm, dancing to the music.  Just recently, he's starting spinning in a circle, too.
• He's a good eater, and will eat pretty much anything although his favorite appears to be any kind of pasta, especially with tomato sauce.  He also really likes bananas, yogurt, and squash.  He takes after his Mommy and will suck on a pickle or a lemon without even making a face.  Of course, he also has his cajun roots and seems to like spicy foods as well!  He has six teeth, four on the top and 2 on the bottom.
• He's a great sleeper and usually sleeps through the night from about 7:30pm to 6 or 6:30am.
• He loves to play with his puppies.  He will hold toys in his hands and play tug of war with Albert.  He also tries to give them hugs.  At this point, he is a little rough with them, so they spend most of their time running from him, but I think they will become great friends as he grows up. 

Finally, a couple more shots of our birthday boy in his birthday shirt:

Our Little Monkey's First Halloween

We had a really great first Halloween weekend!  The festivities began on Saturday night with a party at Uncle Austin's house.  Jack was the only munchkin in attendance, but that just meant he got all the attention!  Here he is for the first time in his adorable monkey costume:

Lately, he's been fascinated by all things round, all of which he calls "balls."  Of course, this includes pumpkins, even light up ones on sticks:

Uncle Austin was also dressed up as a member of the monkey family - apparently Jack is not too fond of gorillas:

Much less scary without the mask...

We began Hallloween day with pumpkin carving.  I had grand visions of Jack laughing as he helped us clean out the pumpkin, but Jack had other ideas.  He was not a fan of pumpkin guts:

We called our finished product a "Jack"-o-lantern because we carved the mouth to look like Jack's teeth (he actually has 6 teeth now, 4 on top and 2 on bottom, but these 3 were the first to come in):

After a quick bath, we headed to Fort Worth to Brandi and Ryan's house, who had been nice enough to invite us over for trick-or-treating.  We met Brandi, Ryan, Lincoln and Nana for lunch at Delaney's Irish Pub.

Lincoln had a great time coloring, while Jack had more fun playing with the crayon wrapper:

After lunch, we went back to the McCarthy's and spent some time outside on Lincoln's super cool new playset:

Finally, it was time to go trick-or-treating!  Here are the cousins, Robin and the Monkey, hangining out on the front porch swing:

Ryan dressed up as Batman, and Lincoln was his trusty sideckick, Robin.  It was so cute!

And here's our little family:

And so the trick-or-treating began.  Jack's very first trick-or-treating house was Aunt Brandi and Uncle Ryan's.  He was so excited!  You can't really tell from this photo, but he grabbed ahold of the wagon and started shaking it and laughing:

Next, we headed to Lincoln's friend Ryan's house, where Jack was greeted by a very friendly giant pumpkin in a funny mask:

Ryan and Lincoln decided to bike around for a while and Jack rode in the wagon:

Finally, after a long night of trick-or-treating (or at least 5 or 6 houses), the boys check out their loot:

Thanks so much to Brandi and Ryan for having us over to celebrate Jack's first Halloween!  We're so glad Nana was able to make the trip to celebrate such a great day!

Zombie Walk Dallas 2010

So, our sweet baby Jack will be celebrating his big first birthday on November 16, 2010!  Mom and Dad decided that they wanted some professional photographs to commemorate the occasion.  Not satisfied with the traditional studio photographs, or even some adorable kiddie photos taken among the flowers and trees, I decided I wanted to try something different.  I wanted something that felt more "urban" and something that suited a little boy.  So, at the advice of our photographer, we chose the Deep Ellum area of Dallas.  For those not familiar with Dallas, Deep Ellum is an area just east of downtown.  The area itself is littered with bars, music venues, restaurants and tattoo parlors.  Perhaps not the place you'd want to take a one-year-old on a weekend night, but during the day it provides an excellent spot for photographs with its brightly colored doors and graffiti art covered walls.  Are you thinking I'm crazy yet?  Just wait...

Tommy, Jack and I met the photographer in Deep Ellum around 5:30pm on a Saturday.  Should normally be a quiet time in Deep Ellum, perfect for snapping some photos.  However, this particular day, unbeknownst to any of us, was the day of "Zombie Walk Dallas 2010."  This means that, in addition to the normal eccentricities of Deep Ellum, we now had hoards of people dressed up in their finest zombie garb, sporting fake blood, and moaning as any good zombie would, all parading around Deep Ellum.  I think our photographer was as shocked as we were, and none of us were exactly sure what would happen in this photo shoot.  Jack, on the other hand, took it all in stride.  While he wasn't exactly his normal, super-smiley self, he wasn't at all upset.  He studied everything as Jack always does.  He stared at the motorcycles and cars that drove by packed with zombies and music blaring.    He smiled at the zombies as they walked by, all exclaiming how cute he was.  He walked, arms outstretched towards the tattoo artists who stepped out of their parlors to take a break.

When we left, we weren't at all sure if we'd gotten any good photographs.  As it turned out, we didn't need to be worried.  Our photographer, Allison Duckworth of Eleven Thirty-Six Images did an amazing job and we love just about every one of the shots she took.  I can't show them all here because I haven't received the CD I ordered yet, but I will show you a couple of the preview shots she sent us:

 

 

More to come soon...