Happy Birthday to you...

Happy (slightly belated) birthday to my beautiful boy!  It has been such a wonderful and busy month. When I was "planning" out my family... how many kids I would have, what month I desired them to be born in (haha) I didn't want to have a baby in December.  How can that compete with Jesus' birthday and all the excitement of that?!  Then Lincoln was born on December 12th and I discovered just how magical a birthday is that time of year.  His birthday is all that much more special and I think I may forever tear up at hearing songs about the birth of Jesus thinking about giving birth to my own boy this time of year.

We had a party with all our family to celebrate the weekend before his big day.  A friend gave me this recipe for oatmeal muffins and I decided I could make Lincoln a smash cake out of it.  The recipe is great for a one year old.  It has oatmeal, banana, applesauce, cinnamon, milk egg... and a couple of other ingredients I can't remember.  I then "frosted" it with vanilla greek yogurt and put a few M&M's on it.  Even the blue piped edges are yogurt!  It turned out nicely.

 I received no complaints about the healthy version of a smash cake.

  

I got this sweet little moment when I was setting my exposure on my camera for our family picture.

 After Lincoln's party I took him outside to get a few pictures with his balloons.  He liked this stick instead!

On his official birthday I drug out my white backdrop and got some additional photos with him and his oatmeal muffin/ yogurt goodie.  I didn't really need more photos of the blue mess.  I'm not sure why I torture myself with the 100 additional unedited images that stare at me from a lonely folder on my desktop.  I have huge visions of "catching up" this winter :)

Now that all our presents are gone from under the Christmas tree, it may be coming down tonight.  It's gotten rather tiresome trying to keep these little hands from bring down the entire tree.  I'm wondering if next year will go smoother.  I did feel like I needed some photos of him and the tree so that was I guess I special birthday treat to touch a few.

 I took Lincoln out to lunch to see Daddy!  That seemed like a big hit for everyone.  We went to Sub City downtown, where of course there were no high chairs or booster seats.  While we were out and about, Lincoln and I also stopped by breast-feeding support group.  We went every week when he was little.  Mostly for something to do and the hospital was so close to home.  We even made a couple of friends that we still play with.  I thought it would be a fun way to celebrate one year of successful nursing.

 Of course we played...

And then ended our fun day with a mini pizza party.  Too bad Lincoln doesn't really like pizza.  He does enjoy chewing on the crust though.  And wow, what a horrible picture of everyone!  Oh well, it's going in the memory book anyway!

After bath, I certainly held my newly one year old and rocked him a little tighter and a bit longer.  What a year!  Happy Birthday Lincoln Jay!