Greyden's 1st Birthday!

If you're good with numbers (or have ever read this blog before) you know that today is NOT Greyden's 1st birthday. It's not even remotely close. In fact, it is almost his 2nd birthday. But with all of the craziness of packing up our lives and moving across the country, settling into our new home, and having a second baby, I haven't had time to write about it. My new goal is to post it by his second birthday.

Greyden's 1st birthday was bittersweet for me. I was sad that we'd have to do it without our families there, but I also knew that our whole Texas family would be there with bells on. Because I told them to. In order to sweeten the deal a little bit, I decided to do a football theme for his birthday. I figured that if I do the party on a Sunday during a Texans game, our friends wouldn't be able to use the "oh, we have plans" excuse to miss a 1 year old's birthday party, since we all got together every Sunday for the games anyway. (They were SO not getting out of this one.) So football it was. I even made a football cake! Yes, I baked and decorated it myself. It was actually pretty fun. I even made him a smash cake that I couldn't wait to see him destroy.

The wine was for mommy. And, one year later, it's STILL sitting in our wine rack because surprise! I was pregnant. AGAIN.  

We were SO excited to give Greyden his smash cake. There were about 5 cameras trained on him and ready to start shooting.

He was so happy pre-cake too....

 

 We were a little surprised when he completely ignored it didn't dive right in.

So Kevin figured he'd give him a taste of it.

He was NOT having it.

Mommy even tried to get in on the action with no luck

Maybe he was intimidated by the size of it? We decided to try a cupcake. And a different high chair, just in case that was the issue.

Oh hells no. Not digging the cupcake either.

On the other hand, Uncle Kenny was digging the cupcake.

After we realized that the cake thing just wasn't going to happen, we put Greyden back in his happy place to calm him down a bit.

Then it was time for the presents! The fedora was from Uncle Paul and Aunt Carla. He also received a couple of different shape sorters from Aunt Nicole & Uncle Joe and Aunt Lisa and Uncle Jeff, and some bath toys from Aunt Jill and Uncle Kenny. Hailey picked out a workbench for him, complete with a hammer. Awesome. The common denominator? All of his toys made noise. Lots and lots of noise.

In addition to his other presents, Uncle Kevin and Aunt Sandy showed up with this little gem, which, an entire year later, we still can't get him out of. Luckily we use it outdoors now since it's summer (and we're in Michigan). In the winter we were constantly pushing him around the house in it. It was wonderful. And, just so that I didn't keep all of that kind of love to myself, I bought one for my friends Nikki and Katie's kids, as well as for my niece Addie. Pretty sure everyone kind of hates me right now. Katie said that her daughter won't go for walks in anything else. That wouldn't be a problem, but Alana has to get out about every 20 feet or so to inspect the tires. Love you guys!



These are the guys who got suckered in to attending a toddler birthday party. I'm sure they'll plan a little better next time.

Since the cake part of party #1 didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped, we were excited to try again at his second party in Michigan. Aunt Kerry made him an Elmo cake and another little smash cake for him to destroy. 

You can see the anticipation in his eyes....

AAAHHHHH!!!!! Get me out of here!

 

No, really! Get me out!



We thought he might do better if he were on Daddy's lap. Um, no. Not so much.

I really wish I could've gotten him pushing the cake away (by the plate, since he wasn't even willing to touch it to get it away from him).

Since we didn't have Greyden's happy place at my parent's house, we retreated to the living room for presents instead.

Kevin and I (okay, just I) got him a Pottery Barn Kids Anywhere Chair. We also got him a Little Tykes play set that never even left the box since we found out we were moving the day after it arrived on our doorstep.



SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Everyone made fun of me for buying a chair for a 1 year old, since he never stayed in one place for more than 20 seconds. But here we are an entire year later and he STILL uses it every.single.day. By far the best purchase I've made for the kid. He won't outgrow it until he's 20. And yes, I do plan on sending it to college with him.


Stay tuned for the next installment of Greyden's birthday, his 2nd one, coming soon! Really, really soon. In just over 5 weeks, I'm going to have a 2 year old!

There are very few things in this world that I don't like. Beef stew and chicken pot pie immediately come to mind (since my world tends to revolve around food). There are also some non-food related things too. For example, Thomas the Train. I cannot stand that stupid train. Or any of his idiotic friends. There is nothing more obnoxious than a whiny blue train that can't make a good decision to save his life. Perfect role model for kids if you ask me. So of course I shouldn't have been surprised when Greyden fell head over heels in love with Thomas. Suddenly, everything in my life is Thomas. Even Elmo has taken a backseat. We have Thomas books, toys, clothes, pajamas, and approximately 143 episodes of the lovable little train on our DVR, which is taking up precious space that was once previously occupied by Keeping up with the Kardashians. *Sigh*

Since we're pretty much living and breathing Thomas, I immediately took notice when, at the beginning of the summer, I saw a picture of him on a billboard along I-75. All that the billboard said was "Thomas the Train at Crossroads". Since being a parent means putting your child's wants and desires above your own sanity, I made a note of it on my phone, then forgot about it until a few weeks ago. It was a Saturday morning and I had been nursing Emerson when the image of the billboard randomly popped into my head. Since I am incapable of nursing without my iPad handy (so that I don't die of boredom - I mean, you can only ogle the baby for so long before you start to go cross eyed), I googled it and found out that Thomas was only at Crossroads Village for two weekends and that weekend just happened to be one of them. I must have blacked out or something because the next thing I knew, I had lost my mind was buying tickets for that afternoon.

Crossroads Village is a turn of the century town in Flint, MI, complete with historic buildings, craftsmen from the period, and the Huckleberry Railroad, which is an authentic Baldwin steam locomotive (I obviously looked it up on their website, because I still don't know what that means). The train, sorry, locomotive, takes you on a 40 minute ride around the Village and Mott Lake. According to the website, Thomas would be gracing us with his presence and taking us on the tour himself. Who (besides anyone in their right mind) could turn that down?

We arrived at 3:30pm sharp for our 4:00 train ride, thanks to Greyden's middle of the day napping. By the time we made it to the station platform, the train was just coming around the bend. I wish I could have caught the look on Greyden's face when he saw the huge Thomas the Train coming our way. His reaction? Total shock and a whispered "Choo......choo......" as Thomas pulled up in front of us.



Greyden's shock over the huge Thomas coming at us.



Riding in one of Thomas's cars.



Thomas the train pulling us around the lake.



Emerson enjoying the train ride.



Daddy and Grey with Thomas (it was about 5 minutes before I could get him to stop staring at Thomas long enough for me to take the picture).




Emerson with Thomas. She didn't need any convincing to turn around so that I could take the picture.


Of course since that day, absolutely everything is Thomas or choo-choo (whereas before, only pretty much everything was Thomas or choo-choo.) Being the stellar mother that I am, I am always on the lookout for a good Thomas bargain (I mean, who isn't?) so when I found some Thomas and Friends bath squirters the other day in Walmart on clearance, I quickly snatched them up. Good thing I did because they are now Greyden's favorite toy. And when I say favorite, I mean that they go from bath to bed to living room to outdoors with him. He even knows their names - Thomas, Salty, and Percy. Yes, the creators of Thomas the Train named one of his friends Percy. Not to say that Percy is a bad name (okay, it totally is) but it's even worse when you give a toddler who is still learning to talk a toy named Percy. As anyone with half a brain knows, toddlers aren't the best at enunciating their words. So we now have Thomas, Salty, and, ahem, "Poocy". Go ahead and say that out loud a few times. Yes, you're saying it right. It would be bad if he were just running around saying Poocy all day. So the fact that he's running around using it in sentences is really bad. Yesterday the sentence of the day was "Ride Poocy?" over and over again. Since Kevin and I are approximately 12, we find this hilarious. The hardest part for us is not to make a big deal out of it (if laughing until you're practically crying isn't a big deal). It is, of course, his new favorite toy, so every other word out of his mouth is Poocy. "Poocy go nigh-night?", "Me want Poocy!", and, Kevin's favorite, "Poocy bye bye?" (It's after that one that Kevin likes to explain that yes, the Poocy is bye bye because no one has seen it in a really, reeeeeeeally long time. Cute.) We haven't had any incidences of Poocy in Public yet, but we're waiting for it. So far we've been avoiding restaurants, just in case, and are a little hesitant to take him anywhere without a background decibel level of a rock concert. I'm sure this is just the beginning...