My Birthday!

Last Friday was my birthday and I had a fun time celebrating. My parents were in town because they were watching the kids all week while our sitter was on vacation. I had to work on Friday and it was a heavier workload than a normal Friday so that was a big bummer. But the awesome part came when I got back to my office after lunch and my boss had a big pink bag (with chevron tissue paper!) waiting in my desk chair for me. This is what she got me:

I have recently updated my dining room and half bath (post coming soon!) and had mentioned to my boss that I saw this wall hanging at Hobby Lobby and I thought it would be perfect in one of my "new" rooms! Super sweet of her!

For dinner we ordered pizza (like our normal Friday routine) and then had an absolutely amazing cake that my sweet hubby ordered from my favorite cupcake shop. Ohmygoodness was it delicious. Chocolate on chocolate with chocolate chips in it! Oh and did I mention that it was 5 layers?? And that he found a cool design online and had them replicate it? Yeah. Awesome!

My girl has really gotten in to smiling and "showing her teeth" in pictures. Can you tell? 

 Cayden wasn't in this picture because he was sitting in his booster eating. What else would he do in the kitchen? I don't think he would ever feel that a picture is more important than his food!

 I don't normally post pictures of presents but I was so excited about these that I have to share! My parents got me this purse and necklace form Charming Charlie that I have wanted all summer!!

 Cayden liked my necklace!

 Jonathan surprised me with a Nike+ gps running watch. I'm really excited about it! I've already used it twice and I really like it! I love that it gives a more accurate distance for my runs. J has one and knew I'd really like one too!

It's a bit chunky on my wrist but I'm ok with it:)

Saturday night we left the kids with my parents and went out for a date to a nice restaurant for a steak dinner! Yum! This is the same restaurant that we went to the night we got engaged! I honestly can't remember the last time we went there because we just don't go to nice restaurants anymore.

We had delicious meals and I even got a free dessert! (Of course we didn't really need a dessert since we had leftover chocolate cake at home, but you can't turn down free dessert!)

I had a wonderful birthday weekend! I felt so loved by all of my family and friends! I remembered back to last year on my birthday when I was so sick and had to go back into the hospital two days after my birthday for my postpartum preeclampsia and ended up staying there almost a week. Wow. As much as it hurts me to see my baby boy so big, I'm so glad it's this year rather than last year! 

12 Months

This is my final installment in Cayden's monthly posts. sniff sniff. I printed all of Cayden's growth pictures for his party and it was so much fun (and sad too!) to see how teeny tiny he was and how big he has gotten. I read Janine's post and decided I need to make Cayden's 12 month post into a 12 month review too. I love looking back!

At 12 months, Cayden is a serious crawler. He is everywhere and into everything. He really really wants to pull up but the kid is a 22 lb chunk. Poor thing can't pull himself up. (Edited to add: Just found out from the sitter that he pulled up yesterday and he did it with such ease that she thought he'd been doing it at home for the past week. [She's been on vacation.] I can't wait to see him do it!) He will stand when we help him stand. He loves music and his favorite toys are two books that play songs. He will push the button and then dance and sway and clap. He loves clapping. He can waive bye bye and he likes to show off all of his tricks of making noises with his hands on his mouth. He is so proud of it. He loves interacting with his sister. He also is super smart (don't all parents say that??) He immediately knew how to use all of his new toys and knew to put the little balls where they are supposed to go. And he took the little pirate people and put them in the hammock on his little pirate ship! It's so fun to see him playing like a big boy!

He is a size 4 diaper and is quickly growing out of 6-12 month clothes. He has 3 teeth on the bottom and up until this past week only had one tooth on top on the right (not a center tooth). This past week his left side tooth (not a center tooth) finally came through. Can you please picture his mouth...three bottom teeth, no center top teeth and two top side teeth? It is so funny! Today he finally cut one of his center top teeth. I'll be thrilled to have him finish teething for a little bit. He is such a happy laid back baby so when he's fussy from his teeth it's just not like him. I feel so sorry for him!

Now for a scroll stroll down memory lane...

First day home from the hospital. Look at those skinny little wrinkly legs! He was swimming in his Newborn size clothes and we ended up buying him some Preemie clothes.

 This picture was near impossible since as soon as we took our hands off of him he would roll and crawl away. 

Here are his monthly sitting pictures!

I love looking through these pictures to see how much personality my baby has gotten! I absolutely love him to the moon and back! 

Cayden's Birthday Party

I think this is the last birthday post! We had a wonderful time celebrating my sweet baby boy. He actually enjoyed his smash cake (unlike his sister!) so it was fun to watch him. And he enjoyed opening his presents (even if he had to be redirected a couple times). We had fun spending time with family and friends. Here are some pictures we took during the party.

My boy. 

 We tried to get pictures of Cayden with all of his friends. (5 out of 6 were willing to take pictures so that's pretty good odds!)

 Family picture (in front of my new curtains I whipped up on Friday! Love em! Hopefully I'll have a blog post about that soon.)

Time for CAKE! He was not into his birthday hat:)

 Daddy thought he'd help out a little bit.

 He loved the cake. His little legs were continually kicking with happiness.

I love this messy face!

 He loved it!

 Would you believe that after all of this sugar he went right down for his nap after the party and took an awesome nap!

Presents!

 Cayden loves pulling the tissue paper out of the bags!

 He got a new blanket and started playing peek-a-boo. It was so cute!

 Peek - 

 a-boo!

 Cayden got a pup and he didn't have the intense reaction that his sister did for her 1st birthday (remember that? Click here to see!) but it was still pretty sweet!

 Cuddles!

 Some family pictures. Grammy with her grandkids.

 Papa and Nana with the kids.

 I love that Coda photo bombed this picture. Ha!

 My precious 1 year old!