Somehow Iâm the mama of a one-year-old. Some of the days of the past year have felt so long, and yet somehow the year has flown by, and my baby boy is one. He has the most amazing little personality full of giggles and teasing. He laughs at burps and even says âoooooooâ at the big ones (this is completely my fault). He has a love affair with balls and cars. He is best buds with his Daddy. He makes a ton of animal noises, with âmeowâ being the cutest. He loves Sesame Street, dancing, and being chased. Heâs never met an orange food that he didnât love. And he gives the sweetest hugs and kisses.
We celebrated with a family Sesame Street party the weekend before his birthday. I may have spent a few too many hours creating the backdrop for the cake table, and getting those balloons up there was quite the ordeal! Next time Iâll know to string them together with fishing line and then tie them up. His godmother even made the cutest cupcakes and Elmo smash cake for him, which he LOVED. It was such a fun afternoon celebrating with so many people that love him.
Hereâs something that I didnât know: if you order digital invitations of copyrighted characters from Etsy, you can really only either print them at home (and who ever has a working printer?) or sneakily print them on your own somewhere like Office Max (which is what we did). Here are the invitations that we ordered and they turned out really cute.
On his actual birthday we visited his birth family in Texas. It was such a great visit! They had a cake for him, and of course we sang happy birthday. We all swam in some super-frigid, pool water at our hotel. We shared several meals, and were able to just hang out and relax.
Itâs amazing and moving to feel how much love his Texas family has for him. His feet hardly ever hit the floor as his b-mom, b-dad, and cousins all competed with each other to be his favorite. And our little man ate up all the attention! It means so much that he will always know them, feel their love, and be a part of his Texas family. Itâll be so important to his understanding of his identity and his understanding of the loss of biological family in his every day life. We are so blessed and grateful to be connected to this amazing family in such a special way. I plan to talk more about open adoption in another post and hopefully shed some light on some common fears and misconceptions.
Thanks again for reading, and as always please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.