The forgotten birthday

My sweet one-year-old boy.

Little Joel turned one amidst the post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas hoopla, as he will every year seeing that his birthday is December 1st. And it kind of got lost in the shuffle, as it probably will every year. We are going to try to fight that, though.

We resisted putting up Christmas decorations inside until after his birthday. We wanted him to be the star, at least this year. He, however, in typical Joel fashion, was very nonchalant about the whole thing.

All he really wanted to do was pull out all the videos and DVDs. We say he's taking inventory. He started out just pulling them out. Then he started trying to put them back. Now he looks and them and decides if it's one he likes or not.

We decided to just have family, and we just had a small afternoon party instead of a big meal like we always tried to do with Gabriel. This is his cake. I don't mean THE cake, I mean HIS cake. The corner of ours is in the background of the picture. The bakery his Tia found will make a smaller version for the kid to tear into.

Only it's not so small, and he didn't quite know what to do with it.

It took a lot of time and a lot of coaxing to get him to dig in.

But then he got a little better at it, and before long he was stuffing big hunks of icing into his mouth like an old pro. All I could do was sit back and wait for the tummy ache, which woke him up from his post-party nap causing big giant screams. Sigh.

But he enjoyed himself, as did all of us, so it was a success. He got some cool new toys, and some new PJ's, the really warm footie kind that he really needed. And some other clothes and a bath toy. All he wanted to do was crawl around after his brother and stare up at Cade and Macy, who he loves having at our house.

Tonight Jav and I noticed that he is getting better at punching buttons and purposefully playing with toys instead of randomly like before. He's also much more thoughtful these last few days. I'll catch him just staring into space thinking about something. But then he'll see me and flash that Joel smile and start moving his happy legs.

I have a bad cough again and couldn't sing to him tonight, so I decided to try whistling O Holy Night. It's not easy to do! But it got him really soundly to sleep.

Love him so, so much.