Nathan's Birthday Celebrations

I'm only a week overdue on this post. I hope you'll forgive me for losing track of time over the last week.

We actually ended up having two celebrations for Nathan's first birthday. The first happened when we were in Dallas fleeing the aftermath of Ike. It was definitely impromptu, since we had no idea we were even going to be there a week before Nathan turned one. Please keep that in mind--how last-minute all of this was--when you see pictures where I'm not wearing make-up and the fact that all of our nicer clothes were dirty.

Despite the circumstances, though, it was great getting to celebrate with family. Of course my parents (Nana and Grandpa) were there, and Matt's grandparents also happened to be in town and came as well. It made the idea to have a cake for him turn into a real party, thrown together or not.
Nathan was thrilled with all his presents, but especially this card. Or maybe just getting to stand up next to the coffee table.
Patrick loves cameras, so he was doing everything he could to help Grammy fix hers.

This was Nathan's big toy at the party, a ride-on toy that makes all sorts of crazy sounds. Both boys love the toy.
I think that's a grin for the camera (thanks Mom for playing photographer for most of our party!).
And here we are as a family helping Nathan open one of his presents. Patrick had so much fun "helping" Nathan open gifts. Boy is his birthday going to be fun this year!
Again with the card. Who knew a card would be so fascinating?
His first taste of both chocolate and cake. He mostly picked at it but seemed to like the taste of the frosting pretty well and did manage to make quite a mess out of it...eventually.

See? His hair was coated in chocolate too. You can bet he had a birthday bath in store for him immediately after the party.
Nana, Grandpa, and the birthday boy
Grammy, Gramps, and the birthday boy
Mommy, Daddy, and the birthday boy
I look awful in the picture, but you can see how excited Nathan was by all the attention.

A few days later Patrick found the hat I'd taken out for Nathan's official first year pictures and insisted on wearing it. By the way, how do you think he knew this was a hat? He hadn't seen his brother wearing it at this point. Either way, it was cute and funny enough that I had to get a picture.

I decided to do something a little different for Nathan's cake this time around and made cupcakes instead. I also made a single layer round cake for something different if the cupcake thing didn't work out with the boys (it did). When I put it all together, i realized it looked kind of like a spider. I guess I should have put a face on it and make it look planned.

Here's Nathan waiting on his cake--or cupcake--trying to figure out why we're all singing off-key to him.
Patrick obviously enjoyed his taste of birthday cake. He's asked for it every single day since. Sometimes he'll find the birthday hat and put it on before asking, as though you have to be wearing the birthday hat to get birthday cake, like Nathan was on his birthday.
Nathan actually ate more of the cake this time, now that he knew what it was, but he managed to not make as big of a mess. He still ended up with another birthday bath, though.
Since he'd already opened half or more of his birthday gifts the week before, his loot pile wasn't as big this time, but we compensated by giving him bigger gifts.
Fortunately he could care less how many there were. He loved them all, and both boys play with his new toys all day every day. They are going to love getting to do this all over again in another week when Patrick turns three.