Two Candles

We were so happy with the party! Thank you to everyone who came and shared yesterday with us. We really celebrated Christian. The day was pretty perfect. It was nice weather, good food, tons of people, and Christian was there, which made the day perfect.

It was also great to have all the babies together. I have some friends that ALL have children around 10 and 11 and we ALL had our 2nd baby within the past year. So I was really happy they were all able to come and I could take a group picture.

(L-R: Shauna and Christian, Karen and Abigail, Janet and Mia, Paloma and Joaquin)

As mentioned previously, the theme was Superman since Christian is our little Superman. He wore his superman leg splints with Superman on the back (pictures of these soon to come). But he promptly threw up on his color coordinated shirt and had to change...a couple of times. He had a Superman jumping castle and blue and red decorations. The jumping castle was for all the other kids, but someday I know he'll be able to get in and go crazy.

Manny made a yummy cake that was awesome! It was one layer of chocolate and one layer of strawberry, with Oreo Cookie pudding in the middle. Below is a picture, but, of course, I have to ruin it with my picture taking skills. I had a bright idea that I would take a picture of it from the back since I was too lazy to move, and I would just flip it after I downloaded it on the computer. Yeah...not a good idea. See for yourself. My (lack of) picture taking skills doesn't do the cake justice. And taking a picture upside down and thinking the computer will flip also flips the words. But you get the idea.

We added two candles. One candle was for his first year of life and the other was to celebrate the coming year of life. It was important to me to be able to put another candle on that cake because it represents the future. We invited a pastor that came to visit Christian in the hospital to say a prayer before blowing out his candles. Manny also thanked everyone and said an emotional speech about how lucky we were to have the people we have in our lives to get us through and how blessed we were to have Christian. Then we sang happy birthday and we (I) blew out the candles. I have to admit that I got a little choked up singing happy birthday because it was a song that almost wasn't. And I felt so blessed and humbled to be able to hold my baby and sing that song.

Manny's Speech

Singing Happy Birthday

Blowing out the candles.

Our version of the "Smash Cake."

He did surprisingly well for all the commotion that was going on around him. But he did need a party break when it got later. It was weird because it was like he was feeding off the energy. When I would put him down in his crib for a rest from people he would start moving his arms and looked like he just wanted to join the party again. But I finally cut him off when it got late and he went right to sleep. The party started at 4PM and didn't wind down until close to midnight. That's pretty typical of our parties, though, and it always makes me happy that people don't want to leave! Fine by me, I just got up and announced I was going to bed.

Then, early in the morning I was awakened by Christian...he was crying. My husband yelled over, "BEST SOUND EVER!" Couldn't have said it any better myself. I would have picked him up and held him but that sometimes makes him even more agitated to be moved so much. So I turned him on his side, which relaxes him, patted his back, and he fell asleep. I had never been so happy to be awake before dawn.