The one about Reed's First Birthday

You hear this from all the moms that you know, "I can't believe my baby is turning one!" Or whatever age/grade/milestone it might be at the time.  It's really hard not to be so proud and so excited about these things even tho they happen to everyone that has a child. Yes, Reed turned one.  An entire year has gone by since I birthed him and changed our lives more drastically than we could have anticipated.  


A whole year of firsts. As my mom observed, he's seen all four seasons: bundled up in the winter and melted through the summer.  Experienced each holiday: dressed up for Halloween, woke up Christmas morning to presents, brought home Valentines from school friends, played with an Easter basket, and well... slept through 4th of July fireworks.  



A lot has happened in a year. He went from a tiny helpless miracle, to a determined force of destruction with a mind of his own. 


He walks, he climbs, he knows what sound a bear makes, he throws, he laughs, he points, he dances, he stacks blocks.  He amazes us all the time.  


Reed has three teeth. All across the bottom in the front. He had just two for over 4 months before another one decided to emerge. 


So I wanted to make Reed's birthday party really special.  It seemed like I'd been planning all year.  I had lots of ideas and just kept hoping that it would all be enough. Special enough, fun enough, entertaining enough, and memorable enough. We celebrated at the clubhouse in our neighborhood to avoid destroying our house. My big thing for the kids was the ball pit.  We filled an inflatable pool with 500 plastic balls (turned out we could have used more!) and the kids loved it.  I don't think there was a single moment that you could have glanced over and caught it empty during the party.  For treats, I set up a parfait bar in bright colored sand pails.  I made a delicious healthy granola to go with the berries and yogurt. 

 Also, the morning of the party I made 4 dozen gourmet cupcakes. Half were "Banana Pudding" and half were "Cookie's n Cream". 


Other decorations included Reed's full year of monthly photos in the basket that I had been taking since his birth.  They were strung along the wall and clipped to a blue ribbon.  I also created a slideshow of his first year in photos to display on our digital picture frame. 



One of the other fun elements were the name tags. I printed off sheets of printed name tags that said, Hi! I'm Reed's:
This allowed out guests to express their relationship to Reed.  Some were very creative, but it was fun to find out what people came up with.  We had, 
Hi! I'm Reed's: 
Creepy Neighbor, 
future girlfriend, (if Reed plays his cards right) Sophie
girlfriend Piper
Grandma Jackie
Dad's boss, Todd. 
Friend, Cassie
Play Papa, Keith
And many other great versions! 


I could have done some better planning day-of.  When we came down to the wire I was stressing at how much prep we had to do still.  Luckily our early arrivers were also great helpers.  Whew!


Reed was a wonderful birthday boy. He played hard- he mingled and made sure to hand out birthday hugs all around.  When it came time for cake he was more interested in sharing it with everyone else than eating it himself.  However, he did get in a few bites, even with 30 people staring at him. 


We had received a tremendous amount of RSVPs but when it came down to day of- there were an unfortunate amount of last minute cancellations.  I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but there were so many cupcakes to bring home and my fridge is packed with yogurt from the parfait bar!
To all of you who missed it, I'm sorry you couldn't be there.  We had a blast!