1st birthday - part deux

On Oliver's actual birthday, my mom came over and made dinner, and then Oliver had another go around with a cupcake.  This time, he definitely figured out that cupcakes are for EATING and not for nomming on like a vampire. 

He enjoyed that cupcake so much!  Even if it was 3 days old.

              

              

What, does he have something on his face?

12 month check-up!

I do have photos and a little video of "Cupcake part 2" from yesterday that I have yet to upload, so in the mean time, I will share with you his 12 month stats, and some photos from my crappy phone.

Oliver had his well child check today:
Weight - 20 lbs, 15 oz (almost 23rd percentile)
Height - 30" (58th percentile)
Head circumference - 18.31" (54.5th percentile)

Even though he is in the thinner side weight-wise, the doctor said since he is still hitting all milestones and loves to eat, it is not a concern for her, and we are okay to switch to whole milk instead of formula!  Yeay!  We will finish off the container since it cost an arm and a leg, and then it's whole milk all the way.  I gave him some milk last week just to be sure he wasn't going to have any issues with it, and he drank it right up! 

Oliver also had 4 shots today!  Poor guy!  I will skip over that nasty bit of crying and share some photos from Tuesday evening.  O and I took a walk, and stopped at the park.  He enjoyed crawling around.  Apologies in advance for the quality. 

Oliver is picking daisies for his momma!  :-)  

Oliver's 1st birthday party!

Oliver turns the big ONE on Wednesday, but we celebrated his birthday on Sunday (since no one likes mid-week parties, including myself).  We prayed and prayed for good weather, and although it was partly sunny, it was the wind that drove us to a quick party. 

I've heard everyone had a wonderful time - I was very very busy, and felt like I barely spoke with anyone.  So if I didn't say much or anything to anyone, I am sorry in advance.  I also didn't take too many photos.  Some of these are from my mom's camera (click to enlarge). 

I'm pretty sure Oliver's favorite part of his b-day party was my dad pulling him around in the wagon.  He liked it best when he was in a full sprint!  Luckily, no babies were harmed.  Just big smiles.

          

We were all bundled up (except my brother, who never gets cold, apparently). 
 

         

It was cupcake time - my mom made two different kinds.  Oliver enjoyed a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  

           



Oliver then very delicately ate sucked on the cupcake like a vampire.  He did eventually eat the whole thing, but it did take a while. 

He nommed and nommed on his little hand like that for a long time.  

This was about the dirtiest he got.  Kept it pretty clean, there, Oliver!   We wrapped it up a bit after that, deciding that Oliver was cold enough.  After a warming bath, Oliver opened up his presents!  He loved immediately playing with all the toys as soon as they came out of a bag or were unwrapped.  He got some nice new toys and clothes and money for college. 

Tim and I were just WIPED after all the activities of yesterday, and so was Oliver, so we all called it an early night and went to bed.

I cannot believe this year has flown by already!  More birthday updates as they come about!

Is that Matthew McConaughey? Amber teething necklaces

I was reading about ways to help little O get through the teething process.  A few ways to relieve his pain are no longer an option.  There used to be teething tablets, but those were pulled from the shelf.  It was just announced that a certain chemical in Orajel can lead to some horrible side effects including death.  And I for one am just not comfortable rubbing whiskey on his gums.

A lot of natural places talked about amber necklaces.  The amber release oils that are natural pain relievers.  It sounds like a bunch of hippy-granola mumbo jumbo, but at this point, I am ready for anything.  That, and I would really love to see Oliver without a bib!  :-)

I'm still not sure if it works yet or not (the interweb is split  - about half of the feedback about amber teething necklaces believe this like crazy, and the other half thinks this doesn't work and it's unsafe).  I'll have a full day with him on Saturday to get results for myself.

Tim's first reaction when seeing little O with the necklace was, "OMG is that Matthew McConaughey??"

               

I dunno, what do you guys think??  Just needs to get a backwards hat and I think we have a spitting image of the hunky guy on the left.

My friend Kirsten let me borrow her wagon for Oliver's birthday party this Sunday. As mentioned before, his party is barnyard themed, and what barnyard party would be complete without a wagon??

       

We had a lot of fun with it at work today. You can read about it on Fiona's blog here.

At the park

On Saturday, Oliver and I went to go visit my mom at work.  She is lucky enough to work in Magnuson Park.  This was an old military base, but it now a huge park, filled with off-leash dog areas (even into Lake Washington, lucky dogs!), huge play fields, and a pretty big play structure area for kids.  It was a really nice day out, so we went to the play structure and took Oliver around to some of the little kiddie fun stuff.

                 

First stop was the baby swing.  A friend of mine recently took some photos of her son in one, and it looked too cute, so Oliver had to get in on the action, too!

Next was the slide.  I was impressed that he was able to stay sitting up all the way down, for never being on one before.  He had a HUGE smile on his face every time he got to the bottom.

We also went on the bouncy toy.  This one was a fire truck.  Oliver liked trying to shake it to get it to move.  

I took a video with my camera (camera camera, not Flip Camera) of little snippets of his fun time.

He had such a fun time.  Later in the day, I showed Tim these photos and video, and we went to a different park and did more swings!  So fun!

Games we play

I'm running out the door, but I promised Tim a new blog post with some recent video clips. :-)

First up is the shuttle launch - his little squeals of delight are so funny!



Then Oliver plays this game where he is pretending to hand Tim bits of the cat post (there is never anything in his hand). This video does not show the true length of how long this went on. Hahaha!

BabyLegs photoshoot!

A few weeks ago, BabyLegs posted on Facebook that they were holding an open casting call - e-mail a recent photo of your little one, and the details on them, to be part of the fall collection.

Oliver was selected as one of those lucky few.  We went down for a fitting a few weeks ago and yesterday was the big day.  Tim and Oliver went down to Georgetown for the event.

Someone was there streamed the whole thing live from her iPhone, but it is blocked on my work computer (not enough Flash updates).  We found the chunk that Oliver and Tim are in here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14654573

Oliver is in a long sleeve green onesie, and is sometimes wearing a super cute fuzzy hat.  Tim is in a short sleeve brown t-shirt.  The person doing the iPhone seemed to get a lot of some girl in a tu-tu to the point where I wanted to shove her out of the frame!  Hahaha!  It's a long video, but Tim and O are only in the first like 10 minutes or so.

Don't worry - this was just a one-off and Oliver will not be some kind of stage baby.  Really.  :-)
I'm also getting prepared for Oliver's birthday party.  I took some photos from my phone, if you would like a sneak peek.

It will be barnyard theme, and will be outdoors - so everyone pray for good weather!

Happy Mother's Day!

It was quite a change for me this year for Mother's Day.  I had always celebrated the other mother figures in my life, and this year, I was the one to be celebrated (along with all the other mothers, of course).  On Sunday, Oliver and I walked down to the Ballard Farmers Market to pick up some fresh cut flowers.  This is now the ONLY place I buy flowers if I can help it.  You can get a huge bouquet of fresh flowers for $5 - $15 depending on how big you want it.  I picked up three bouquets and walked around a bit more before heading back home.

The family was coming over for dinner, so Tim and I cleaned a little and I made dinner.  Miss Chelsea was in top form last night.  Both her and Oliver were wearing tank tops like it was summer!

This one is a little grainy - but still super cute. 

Earlier in the day, Oliver crawled into the bathroom (his new favorite hangout).  I was folding laundry in the next room.  I am learning that if I don't hear anything, he's probably up to no good.  Case in point (and look at his guilty face):

Yes, that is toilet paper!  Oliver unrolled the whole thing.  Luckily it was just about halfway done.  We now have it all sitting in the sink to use.

It's hard to get mad about something like this.  Especially when he smiles up at you and giggles like he knows he did something he wasn't supposed to. 

We had a great but way-to-quick weekend.  Happy Mother's Day!

Per Tim's request...

He cannot view youtube at his work, so I made a little video after Oliver ate dinner last night.  What a cutie pie.

He's showing off his skills.

O and his playtime

So I will apologize in advance that the following video is on youtube and not on vimeo (I find the quality a million times better on vimeo), but after piecing together the clips the file was just slightly over the allotted amount for vimeo - 20 megabites over :-(  So I will need to get another little video together so Tim can view it at work as he cannot view youtube videos there. 

So just an update, Oliver is a crawling machine.  So much so that he would rather crawl now instead of cruise.  He's learned that he is much faster at crawling, so now I think he won't be walking for a little bit. 

He also continues to eat and try new foods.  I am so impressed with the variety of what he eats.  The other day, my mom figured out in one meal he had 7 different fruits and veggies!

The following video is kind of long, but I was too tired to do any editing.  4 different clips put together of Oliver playing and being silly.

3 weeks away to Oliver's first birthday!!  Where did the year go???