Tuesday, September 21, 2010

9/21 - Eli's 1st birthday


We celebrated Eli's 1st birthday at my dad's house. We came to St. Pete on Friday and spent the day with my dad. On Saturday, we took some pictures in the morning with my cousin Rachel. Rach is fine tuning her photography skills and we wanted to give family photos a try in which we were not in a studio. We had fun and I'll post some of those pictures in the next couple days. Eli was really indifferent that he could face forward. In fact, I think he likes facing backward better.

The boys had matching green shirts on at the beginning of the morning but Eli got so dirty in the sand that we had to change him after we were done with pictures.
Eli got his own "smash cake" as Publix called it. He went for the cake right away which was a big contrast to Aiden's 1st (and 2nd) birthday. He stuck his hand in the cake with no problem and just put icing all over his face.
He ate quite a bit of cake and icing and then I finally had to pull the plug on the cake eating. He made a huge mess of himself but he had fun.
Despite the picture of Aiden looking so serious, he had fun eating cake too.
He wasn't really sure how to open presents but thankfully his big brother knows how to open them. I think Aiden had more fun than Eli opening presents but that's because Aiden understands about presents now. We were very excited to see family (nana, Aunt Becky, Uncle Bill, Jeremy) and friends (Carol & Doug, Cathy & Buddy).
Aiden even got a few presents of his own which he was excited about. Eli got a truck from Becky and Bill and Aiden kinda thinks it's his. This is a good lesson in sharing for Aiden because he gets mad when Eli wants to play with it so we explain that it's Eli toy and he was sharing with Aiden.
The UF vs. Tenn game was on right after Eli's party started so it was easy to all coordinate our clothes! We even shoved Eli into a 6/9 mo Gator outfit. We are on the lookout for a new 12 mo outfit for him but haven't found one yet.
It's pretty close to impossible to get all of us looking at the camera when you have 2 boys at this age. We still try though.
The boys did a pretty good job of sleeping while we were away. They don't room so well together because they want to stay up and play and they take turns keeping each other up. One day Eli went to sleep and Aiden was up playing and the 2nd day we were there Aiden fell asleep and Eli was up. Eli got some clothes for his birthday too. He loved playing with the bags on Sunday.
On Sunday, we decided to take our time rather than try and race back. Our only goal was to make sure the boys got a good nap. Eli took his morning nap fine and then we all went to a local playground. Aiden had a ton of fun and Eli crawled around the playground too. We stayed there about an hour and then came home and did an early lunch so we could do an early nap. We separated the boys to help ensure a good afternoon nap. It worked! The both slept like champs for 2+ hours. To make things even better, my dad hurried home from the family reunion he was at to be able to see us before we left on Sunday. I though we were gonna be able to see him for 10-15 min because he was gonna get home right before we left but it ends up he and my grandma drove straight from GA to the house and showed up at 12:30ish. It was awesome. We all got to talk for a while until Eli and then finally Aiden got up (I had to wake Aiden up).
Since there are steps at papa's house, we decided it was about time to make Eli learn how to crawl them. He can go up with no problem and we haven't started working on the going down yet. I need to spend time with Eli without Aiden around. I feel like Eli is going to be pretty behind in everything because I don't have the time to sit down and do stuff with him like I did with Aiden.
Aiden was being goofy at pop's house (we started off calling him papa but Aiden has decided to call him pop so I'll use that terminology too). He was running around the house pulling his pants up and laughing. He loves the toy room at pop's house. I don't even bring toys anymore for him to play with. My sister and her 3 boys used to live there and left lots of toys behind because she doesn't have room for them. She has lots of Cars stuff and Aiden manages to find all it and borrows it while we are there.
Aiden absolutely adores pop and it's so cute. He talks about him for days after we/he leaves.
Here is a picture of great grandma Hagan and the two boys. Aiden wasn't really in a picture-taking kind of mood but Eli was game.

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