My Baby Boy is 1!!!

Caleb's birthday fell on a Wednesday - which is 2nd only to Sunday in the "worst days for your birthday to fall on" in this family. It was a crazy day - lots of fun things, but a full day for sure. Mom's flight came in that morning, so we definitely wanted to wait for her to be able to celebrate. David was working, but I managed to steal him away from work around 3 pm to be able to celebrate Caleb's birthday before he and I headed to choir rehearsal and then off to our conference.

Because Caleb is completely fixated on balls these days, I decided to go with the sports theme for him. I found "partyware" at the Dollar Tree and decided to make cupcakes look like balls (I had to research the basketball one - there were several disagreements on which way the lines actually go!).

He enjoyed climbing all over the present that Mom got him - before he even got to open it! It's as if he had a premonition it was something to ride on?!?!

Kelli brought him this shirt to wear on his big day. Joseph wore it when it was his birthday too :)

He's been taking 2 or 3 steps for a few weeks - all of a sudden would let go of furniture and take a few steps before falling - but it was as if a switch was flipped on his birthday! Suddenly he was taking 5 or 6 or 7 steps and TRYING to walk across the room! I couldn't believe it!

Isn't he so cute? WALKING across the room to me? Like he's a big boy or something!

Kelli got to see my blog books for the first time...I keep hoping she'll give in and start her own blog soon so we can check in on Joseph too!

Poor Caleb - I had to hold him off for his nap so we could get the party started - we had quite a schedule that afternoon! He was tired though!

He did recognize that the cupcake was a "ball"...he probably thought it was a real ball, actually!

I was SHOCKED - he actually picked the whole thing up and started eating it right away. First of all my kids to do that. All the others sort of just messed around with the frosting for a while...and Caleb eats probably less than any of them did at this age. But he knew there was no messing around with this cupcake!

I actually sort of wondered if he ate more of it because it was chocolate cake. All the others had vanilla (Callie's was strawberry cake I think)...chocolate was a big hit!

It was a big deal which "ball" everyone was going to choose...

You'll notice that now Caleb is working on a "football" cupcake...when he started with a "baseball". Well, after he FINISHED his whole baseball cupcake, he started pointing at Jacob's and wanting more!! So I gave him another one - after all, it WAS his birthday! :)

Does this look like a sugar coma or what?

Taking a break to read a little Curious George...

Opening his presents...with a LITTLE help from his siblings.

I felt like such a loser mom. We had JUST gotten back from vacation, and then I had about 4 days to prepare for this next trip, and I was getting all the boys' school stuff ready and poor Caleb's birthday was right smack in the middle of all that. I had bought him a new package of sippy cups but had never gotten around to getting anything else. So all he got from us were cups. And then, as if that weren't bad enough, as soon as he opened them, he tried to drink out of them - he was so excited. and I hadn't even thought about that and so they were empty (I had at least washed them the night before, but I don't know why I didn't think to put something in it...)

It did make me feel better that he was excited about his cups though! :)

I finally put some water in there and he was a happy boy!

Opening Kelli's present...she got him an adorable little outfit (complete with plaid shorts - LOVE them) and some really cool bongo drums!!!

Opening his present from my Mom.

He couldn't even wait to fully open the box - he climbed right on and was ready to ride!

And then Callie took over and wanted to ride...but at least Caleb had his new cup!

Here's the new drums from Aunt Kelli - Joseph has a set too and she said he loves them!!

It was a very fun celebration for my sweet little baby boy! It's so hard to believe that he's a year old now. What a year it's been! I remember so clearly last year - walking around the zoo with my kids while I was in labor with him....calling David at work while he was in staff meeting to give him updates on my contractions. And now we've so settled into life - I can't imagine our family without him. He has been such a loving boy - very happy to just hang out and be with you. I'm excited to see how he is going to grow and develop even more this year. I'm SO thankful that God chose me to be his mom!!!