Birthday Party

On Sunday the 15th, we had a birthday party for Daniel. Sasha rented out a European restaurant and we invited family and friends to celebrate with us. My parents came over from Louisiana, Sasha's grandparents came over from Alabama, and we had friends come over from various places. Sasha bought Daniel a really cool birthday outfit. Here he is looking like one of the Sopranos.


Sasha and her mother made a poster full of photos of Daniel throughout his first year. It really turned out nice. Everybody loved it. (Click on the picture to see the pictures and captions on each of them)

Daniel is really coming along with his walking. Actually, it's all he wants to do anymore. Lately he has been holding onto only one hand and is getting his balance really well. He loves to dance too.

That smile gets me every time. You can't hear it, but he usually squeaks when he does it.

Finally, a picture with the three of us together. One of us is usually holding the camera.

This is a collage of our family and friends. We ordered about three times as much food as we needed, so everyone had plenty. I think we still have some leftovers in the refrigerator. The food was delicious.

We hired a clown named Tater to entertain the kids. She did some magic tricks and made hats and animals with balloons. At first, things were a little odd, but the kids quickly warmed up to her and ended up having a great time. Daniel was most interested in her suitcase which was decorated with all kinds of trinkets. He pulled a few off, but I don't think that she noticed. She made balloon hats for all the kids, but Daniel was not having any of it. So other people were made to wear it, like Sasha's Grandmother, cousin David and Sasha.


Just about the time we decided to give Daniel his cake, he started getting sleepy. We had a full-body bib to protect Daniel, but it was probably unnecessary. He didn't give us the show we expected, but it was funny anyway. I ended up getting more icing on me than Daniel did on himself, but Sasha took my clothes to the cleaners yesterday.

Happy Birthday, Baby Boy! We love you so-so much!

Written by Stephen

How many people does it take...

....to cut a baby boy's nails?

Are you counting?

Still counting?

How about now?

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

If you counted FOUR, you are right! Mommy and Daddy to entertain and the two grandmothers to hold/cut. How does nail-cutting go in your house?

Stephen's Birthday Dinner

It was Friday, the 13th. Are you scared yet? Well, you should be! Read on to find the horror :)

I know, I know these posts are supposed to be all about Daniel and his Birthday and Stephen's Birthday is not for another 3 weeks. However, his parents are not going to be able to come back and celebrate Stephen's BIG 4-0 with him, so they wanted to take him out. Plus I had an idea for a Birthday present for Stephen that I knew he wanted and needed. I suggested the idea to John, Monnie, and my mum and everybody agreed to chip in.

John, Monnie, and I selected a Persian Restaurant and made a reservation. The decor looked very authentic, they had both "beds" and tables. We chose to sit at a table, but I think we will try to sit on a bed when we go back, however my legs might not be able to handle sitting cross-legged for so long.

Ok, back to my story. Stephen just thought that his parents wanted to take us all for dinner, he had absolutely no suspicion that something different was going on. So he was completely shocked when his parents gave him a card and a small box. They told him to open the box first and there were Star Wars Lego figures there. Stephen started laughing, he used to ask for those when they first came out 30 years ago. He then opened the envelope and his eyes got HUGE when he saw a check there with a note "for Lasik surgery". He was so-so happy! It was amazing!

Stephen has been wearing glasses since he was 8 years old. He hates those things and his eyes are so sensitive that he cannot wear contact lenses. He has been talking about getting Lasik for as long as I have known him. But it was always put on the back burner, Stephen always had something more important to take care of. This year would have been no different since we are trying to save for a house. But now he has no excuse!


Warning! Do not read ahead if you are easily grossed out!

We had some great appetizers and entrees, and had just ordered a dessert when Daniel started getting a little cranky. So Stephen picked Daniel up and set Daniel on his lap facing away from him. About a second later Stephen exclaimed (and I am NOT being dramatic): "OMG, look at this, Daniel had a blow-out!" At this point I was really surprised what was causing Stephen to have such an extreme reaction since Daniel has a few diaper blow-outs a week and we just deal with it. So I just set in my seat (as did Monnie and John) and looked at Stephen. Stephen then said "isn't anybody going to help me?" So I walked around the table and saw it. Stephen was right: OH MY GOD! The poop was everywhere! All the way down Stephen's nice work shirt, on his sleeve and a little bit on his light slacks! This was one of the worst ever. I grabbed Daniel and Stephen proceeded to remove his shirt right in the middle of the restaurant. He got as much as he could off his pants. I did have a spare outfit for Daniel in the diaper bag, but, of course, that restaurant did not have a changing table in the bathroom. And it was raining outside. So we stuffed a bunch of napkins down the back of Daniel's pants, canceled our desert, lined Daniel's car seat with a bunch more napkins and drove home like mad people. Such a great ending to a wonderful dinner! :) Thank you Daniel for great memories! And the little horrors!

Daniel is One Year Old!

Happy 1st Birthday, Daniel!

Yes, it is true, we have a toddler! Pretty crazy, isn't it? I am supposed to be a baby myself. :)

To say the least we had a crazy, busy, fun, and exciting weekend. This year my Birthday was not very exciting for me - you've heard this story before. Daniel's Birthday was completely different! I felt like a 6-years old on a Christmas morning! I had organized a few different events, parties and get-togethers. I am going to split them into a few different posts to make them simpler to read.

On Daniel's Birthday Stephen's parents John and Monnie drove in from Shreveport, Louisiana to visit and celebrate with us. We were so happy to see them. They have not seem Daniel since Christmas, and that is a long time at his age! Unfortunately, my mother was not able to be there when John and Monnie got here in the evening since she is taking English classes 5 times a week. Daniel did not remember his grandparents, but it did not take him long to warm up to them and start playing around. We had so much fun opening presents and hanging out.

Here he is with some of his presents, I am not going to enumerate all of them here, there were a LOT! Thank you Mom, Dad, and Gigi for all of your thoughtful and beautiful gifts. I am sure that Daniel will enjoy playing with the presents for a long time and will keep the keep-sakes that you got him for a long-long time!

My Grandmother Lida got Daniel this amazing slide, Daniel wants to keep sliding down it NON-STOP! He is wearing us out!

We kept Daniel up a little too late and he was NOT in the mood for the apple cake I made. We did manage to get a few cute pictures:

Daniel's Stats at 1 year

I am still working on all those pictures from Daniel's Birthday weekend (we took close to 400), so I thought that I would post the results of Daniel's one-year check-up on 3/13/09. His stats are as follows:

Weight: 30 9 1/2" - off the charts
Height: 31 7/8" - 95%ile
Head Circumference: 50cm - off the charts

As I keep on saying, a teeny-tiny baby, oups toddler boy :)

The doctor also checked him out thoroughly and said: "remarkably healthy baby". Which made me very proud, of course. Daniel had a little runny nose and doctor said that it was no big deal. So, over the course of the weekend, Daniel managed to get a little worse, so now we have a very runny nose and a cough. We will see how he progresses, I might have to take him back to the doctor.

Here is a teaser for the upcoming Birthday posts, Daniel in his First Birthday Party Outfit:

A year ago...

In the days before Daniel's Birthday I found myself reminiscing about what was happening exactly a year ago. Funnily enough, I used to listen to my grandparents reminisce and thought that only old people did this. I guess I am getting old :)

I am posting a few of my favorite pictures from the first three days of Daniel's life. Please disregard my swollen face :)

Daniel at a few minutes of life:

Drugged up and happy mommy with her new baby (by the way, I am not sure if I was high on drugs or on Daniel, see the picture of Stephen and Daniel below. Stephen was definitely not taking anything!):

Happy grandma, Daniel about 6 hours old:

I think those newborn toes are too funny!

New Daddy with his baby-drug:

Day 3 of life, on the way home:

First day at home, sleeping peacefully in Mommy's arms:

Auburn Reunion

I am so behind on my posting! Again! We were so busy this past weekend. Daniel turned one on Thursday, we had lots of visitors, parties and fun. But about this later...

First, I want to write about a wonderful party we went to a little over a week ago. When we moved to Atlanta, Stephen reconnected with his friends from Auburn. On March 7th Candice and Eric had a party at their house for the Auburn friends and their families. There were so many nice pictures from the party, that I decided to create collages. (You can click on each collage to enlarge it and see the pictures in more detail.)

Candice and Eric have a beautiful house with an UNBELIEVABLE deck. If they ever want to sell their house, I would buy it right away just for the deck! The deck has many different levels with recessed hot tub, fire pit area, dining area, hammock, play area, etc. It is huge! And perfect for parties.


Eric built a zip-line for his children, Stephen and I wanted to play around on it too :
Here are we around the fire pit table making s'mores, drinking beer and hanging out. Daniel was a perfect baby the whole day. He got tired, so he took a little nap on his dad's chest. He woke up after a little while and was so cuddly and warm. He does not usually let us cuddle him for a long time, but during that evening he was content with just sitting on our laps and flirting with all the ladies (of course ;) ).
Candice set up a Chocolate Fountain for all to enjoy. Kids definitely went to town on it. I am not sure if any of them slept that night :)

F-R-E-E (with a catch!)

F-R-E-E (with a catch!)

to the first 5 people who comment on this post will get something made by me! Lucky you!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
• What I create will be just for you.
• It'll be done this year.
• You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a joke or a book. It may be poetry or an article on cleaning your home. I may do you a favor. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
• I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
  

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

Little fish

In the Fall I looked and looked for a good swimming program for Daniel. We tried a few before settling on Atlanta Swim Academy. If you live in Roswell or Marietta, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, we were able to take only one lesson before Daniel's chronic ear infection started. And after he got the tubes, he had a sinus infection. So it was not until last week that I was able to go to the pool and get our lessons restarted. I took Daniel by myself for our first class, and it was wonderful (no picture from that one since I was in the water with Daniel and I do not want anybody to see me in my swim suit anyway ;-) ).

My mother is an avid swimmer, she is one of the best swimmers I know. Even before Daniel was born she talked about the importance of swimming for babies. She emailed me a bunch of articles advocating early introduction of babies to water. So I thought it was only fair to let her take Daniel swimming. Our swimming pool has a "one child - one parent only in the water" policy, so I stayed on the edge of the pool and took about a hundred pictures. I am going to have to restrain myself from posting too many :)

Our little boy is just like his mommy - loves the water:

"I want to jump in again, but first I need to get out":

"Here I go":

"I can swim AND check all the girls out":

Another attempt at getting out of the pool:

My mum grabbed a noodle from the side of the pool and Daniel would swim around without being supported, it just might be that we have a Michael Phelps in the making :) (I wish!)

It's nap time

A few days ago I left Daniel in his room just before his nap time. I went to get his pre-nap bottle ready. When I walked back in I saw this (I put the blanket on him). He slept like this for over 2 hours. Silly boy! I guess when it is time to sleep, it is time to sleep!

Atlanta Aquarium

WARNING! Way too many pictures!

OK, I am finally coming to the end of my posts about my Birthday Weekend. As my friend Lera was staying through Tuesday, I decided to take her to downtown Atlanta and show her some of the local sights.

After taking a quick tour of CNN and walking through the Beautiful Olympic Park, we went to the Atlanta Aquarium. And everybody if you are ever in Atlanta, make it a point to go to the Aquarium. It is HUGE and so beautiful. And Daniel really liked it. He was smiling and pointing at all the different fish the whole time.

These first couple pictures are dear to me because they are the first I have of Daniel standing all by himself (leaning on the glass)

These jelly fish were magnificent!

These were some type of eels, they grow to be 16-18 inches long and live like this:

Daniel was not sure about this giant fish at first, but warmed up pretty quickly:

This tank is either the largest or one of the largest in the world, it holds 6.3 MILLION gallons of water. Visitors can take scuba diving or snorkeling excursions in it. I want to do it so bad! A group was taking a tour of the tank when we were there. This is one of the instructors, I guess he was taking a rest ;-)

This tank was huge too, I liked this picture because there are reflections of two of the beluga whales on the surface:

They had a few petting pools, here is the one with sea anemones. They felt rubbery:

The piranhas looked suspended in the air:

This was a small tank with some of the most beautiful plants and a few small fish:

Daniel was fascinated with these alligators:

There seemed to be a million of multi-colored small fish in there:

I like the reflection of the rocks in the surface