Rewind to the Birthday

It's been two weeks since Jonah's birthday, and I have yet to blog about it. This is, in part, because I haven't really blogged much at all in the last two weeks. But, I feel a little obligated to talk about his birthday, since I mentioned it's upcoming in several previous posts.

On August 15th, 2009, my son officially left babyhood and entered toddlerhood. Of course we still call him "the baby" and some will argue that he *is* still just a baby in many ways. But, everything from his reasoning to his behaviors to his growing sense of mobility, are far out of the realm of being infantile.

The birthday party was incredible fun. It was mostly my family and Daryl's family, and a few friends. The party was zoo themed, in honor of Jonah's favorite way to get out of the house. Jonah had a zookeeper hat, and the other children had hats with an animal face on it. We transformed the room at a park into our own little zoo, using inflatable animals and streamers. The cake was made by our family friend, and looked like a tiger and chimp zoo exhibit.
The original design for this cake had twix candy bars rather than pretzals, but as some of our guests were allergic to the ingredients in Twix, we changed to pretzals. I have to admit that when we got home, the first thing that I did was pick all of the candy decorations off of this cake and devour them. The whole thing was so tasty! One side was yellow flavored, and the other side was "vegan" chocolate. Everything except the animal figures was edible! Even the tree was made out of fruit roll-up and a pretzal! I am glad that our friend made the cake, because I am nowhere as clever, and even when I am, somehow the whole thing ends up falling apart.

We held the party at shoepfle gardens, which is near my grandmother's house. This was a compromise, because it was halfway between my family and us. The park itself is very beautiful, and the children's portion even has a carousel for the children to ride. It really was the ideal place for a birthday party!

We played two games for the grownups. The first game was very simple. I had put out rubber ducks that were made as safari animals (they have everything at Oriental Trading!) and put stickers on the bottoms of two of them. When the children got there, of course they started playing with the ducks and moving them around.After the cake was eaten, the grown ups had to find the two ducks with stickers. It was harder than it sounds- the kids really had fun with those ducks! I had also set out Jonahs bragbook and encouraged the guests to look through it. Then,near the end of the party, I asked them eight questions about things in the book. I know it sounds really cheesey and dull, but everyone had a fun time with it, and they really got to know some things about Jonah's first year. It also gave me an excuse to show the scrapbook off, after all of the hard work I spent on it!

The party was more than a celebration of Jonah's birthday. It was a celebration of our first year together as a family. Through the past year, our little family has gone through many joys as well as many trials, and in the end we came out stronger for it. So, here's to life, and everything in it that's good. Happy birthday, my sweet boy!