Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Happy 1st Birthday, Preston!



This past Sunday, August 17th, at 6:41pm, Preston turned 1 year old. It was a very bittersweet moment for us as we are very emotional (ok, I am very emotional) about our sweet baby boy becoming a toddler.

We celebrated all weekend long and Preston was SO great. I swear he is becoming more and more adaptable in his ripe old age of one. On Saturday, we drove up to my Grandma Joan's house for his party with my mom's side, and after a few short hours filled with food, playtime, and cake, we headed back to Fort Wayne to prepare for our Sunday celebration with Kevin's family. We both have large families, and the thought of doing one giant party was too much, so we broke it up and it worked out perfectly.

Saturday, Preston shared his cake with Grams, who is a little bit older than Preston, but has almost as much energy. He ate a great meal, played with some new toys and finished off with smashing into his cake.


He really enjoyed the frosting- just sticking his finger in at first, then getting a bit more with each bite. I don't know that he actually had much of the cake part, but I think he'd settle for frosting for every meal now. I've honestly tried extremely hard to avoid any sugar in his diet, although I am guilty of giving him a taste of nutrigrain bars on occasion. Other than that, the only sugar he's ever really had is the natural sugars in fruit, so imagine what this cake was like for him. And, as if that weren't enough of a treat, he got to play with Grandma's pots and pans.




On Sunday, we had the B-I-G party with all of his grandparents, aunts and uncles, our close family friends and of course, his cousins! We hosted it at our new house so that we had enough room for everyone and had tons of cookout food and outdoor games complete with a kiddie pool and water balloons. It was a blast! I was a little nervous about Preston being tired since he was running short on nap fuel for the day, but the kid was a champ. Or, should I say ham? While he, for whatever reason, wasn't that into his cake on Sunday, (hmmm...maybe because I baked it?) he gave a long and detailed speech for everyone while playing in the frosting. What can I say, he loves an audience. I have no idea where he gets it.







Let me tell ya- Preston CLEANED UP in the gift department. I can't believe how many awesome things he got. In fact, he got so many, I think we'll be storing some away and pulling them out throughout the year in order to keep the novelty strong. Tons of cute clothes- some hilarious onesies designed by the Kings, the motherload of Mini Boden and his super safe Britax carseat (yippeeee!) from Grammy Dawn and Grandpa Tom, money from Papa Sherm and Nana Connie towards his education (THANKS!), cute wooden toys and some not-so-wooden toys which he LOVES from his aunts and uncles, and from Grandma and Grandpa Erb, this amazing Radio Flyer wooden push trike that he's still figuring out, but you can tell by his face how much he loves it already.



I'm a little sad because the day went by so quickly that I completely forgot about two special things we had planned. ** Completely. Forgot. ** One was to ask everyone to write in his journal that we received at our family baby shower over a year ago, and the other was to share a slide show I made him with pictures from this past year. The upside of this is that I was able to include pictures from his birthday weekend to complete the slide show and upload it to YouTube in order to share here.



Even without that fine piece of nearly-professional video, the day was amazing. Thank you to everyone who helped make this past weekend a success! Thank you to my husband who has been an amazing father these last 12 months. I love watching you interact and teach our son how to become a little gentleman. Thanks to our family and friends for your love and constant support as we learn to parent in a positive way. And most importantly, thank you to Preston for being the best baby a mother could ask for. I feel like we've grown together and connected so completely and I'm a better, more complete person because I am your mommy. I love you, my sweet baby boy!

3 comments:

Betsy King said...

AWWW! We love you Preston, Mommy and Daddy!

We had a BLAST at your party and feel so blessed to have been in your life this past year as well! (Ok, officially, our anniversary, hasn't happened yet, but close enough!)

What a beautiful post and precious video. I watched the whole thing! (No warning about the rainbow song though, darn you!!!) ;-)

Preston is so darn cute!!!!!

I've been thinking of you, it's really mind blowing to think it's really been a year, isn't it? Words can't describe it.

PS Hope you didn't mind the 8 million photos I took with your camera. (I see you noticed the one where Miles was trying to show Preston how cool shoes are.)

Anonymous said...

It was a wonderful day, Bonks. Thanks for including us. What a ham that boy was. xo

Aunt Kristin

Anonymous said...

Erin he is sooo cute!!! Glad that I found your blog so I can keep up with you and your family!