Come On, Grab The Present And One!

River celebrated his first birthday on December 31st, 2010. Family and friends braved snow storms, icy roads and "happy" New Year's Eve drivers to honor him. He wasn't entirely sure why he was getting so much attention, but he lapped up the love and a little icing too.

It took him a bit to realize it was okay to gobble the cake and when he did, he was way more interested in the frosting. Smart kid.

He may be one, but he's not too old to blow raspberries.

He's starting to figure out the concept of unwrapping presents. Big, iridescent bows help.

Wishing for??? I guess we'll have to wait and find out.

Pops and Nomee drove from Kansas City, MO. Great Aunt Connie and Great Uncle Eddie and my/your cousin Eddie came from California. Lots of Salt Lake friends showed up too. Presents, cards, emails and texts from all over came in to wish you a happy birthday. You are LOVED!

Nice... a bubble bath to end the night. You were so excited, it took awhile to fall asleep. Then you woke up, while mom was gone celebrating dad's birthday and Nomee had to do some fancy footwork to get you back to sleep. Mom, on the other hand, was so exhausted from the party planning, she was falling asleep on her feet waiting for midnight to wish your dad a happy birthday. The torch of youth has been passed.

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You are a happy, smiley one year old. You aren't quite walking, but you have excellent standing balance and love to push your walker toy around. You also like to push shopping carts. You could walk, if you trusted it, but like crawling, you are taking your time. You are handling weening really well and are almost done nursing. This is a little bittersweet for mom, but so far she's only cried once. You have a constant stream of "words" coming out of your mouth. Besides mom and dad, we recognize kitty and thank you. You love dancing. Your two favorite moves are the sway side to side and the bounce up and down. Whenever the Friends theme song comes on, you stop everything to dance to it. The smile on your face is so huge. The love of Friends must be genetic. You have discovered your nostril is a perfect size resting place for your finger. Thankfully nothing is getting picked yet. You love to copy everything we do, pointing remotes at the tv, dialing phones, typing on the keyboard or reading books. We call you the Grindyloaf, which is an obscure reference to the creatures in Harry Potter that hide in the seaweed and try to pull people down to the bottom of the lake. You got this nickname, because of your tendency to always be underfoot, grabbing at our pant legs. This is especially true if we're trying to cook dinner. You've definitely developed some one year old attitude and we've experienced our first bouts of temper. It's cute, so we're trying our best to be good parents and not laugh and encourage it. You like to roll off the couch without warning and just expect us to catch you. In fact, you like anything that feels like a roller-coaster and your absolute favorite part of the day is when your dad wakes up and flies you around the house.

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Here is an onslaught of videos documenting some one year old cuteness. I tried to keep them short and sweet for blog viewers. I hope you enjoy them.

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(In defense of my dad, I just handed him the camera without telling him it was a video camera. We love the eye ball at the beginning. Such a classic dad move.)

Sugar Rush

River loves Noodle and Noodle is making an effort to love River too. One day.

So cute that he was singing while he danced and then clapped for his own performance.

It's so hard to catch him going all out. He always gets distracted by the camera.



We can't believe our baby is one. The first month lasted an eternity and the last eleven months went by in a blink. There is nothing we can say to sum up the amount of growing our hearts and souls have done this year as a result of loving you. Being your parents is the greatest joy of our lives. Happy Birthday our dear River!!!

Excuses

Top Five Reasons River Has Been One For Three Weeks And I Haven't Done A Birthday Post:

1. I had family in town.
2. I got the stomach flu.
3. More family came into town.
4. I had to install and figure out our new computer. (Bear installed it and figuring it out is still a work in progress.)
5. Some posts are just intimidating as a result of their epicness. (You bloggers know what I mean.)

Please enjoy this small clip of my talented finger snapping baby. Watch close at the beginning. River tends to stop whatever random act of cuteness I'm trying to film as soon as the camera comes out. It took me a couple months, but I finally caught a snippet of his snapping.




Birthday post coming soon....

A Beary Special Christmas

Yes... I am that cheesy... I can't help it. It was beary special. It was River's first Christmas and it was a great one.


We saw lots of beautiful lights. Most of these are from Temple Square. We went on a freezing night with Pops and Nomee. The adults thought the cold was rough and kept diving into buildings to warm up, but River loved it. He was flapping his arms and kicking his legs and laughing the whole time. One of the pictures is of an awesome house we drove by. If you look close, you can see River liked it so much, he tried to crawl right up to the front door.

Christmas Eve was so much fun. Our friend Robert Andrus took us out to dinner. We went to Red Iguana and it was delicious. I had the Christmas Enchiladas. They were pretty much normal enchiladas, but half with red chili and half with green chili. It's a fun idea to make a dish Christmasy, if you get sick of the turkey and ham. Our friend Tye bought us the muppet hats. I have to say, River makes a pretty cute Kermit. When we got home, we did our best to act out the Christmas story... and by act out I mean... I made everyone deal with the outfits until I got a halfway decent picture. Everyone, except for Noodle, who flat out refused to dress like a sheep. Then we changed River into the traditional Christmas Eve pajamas and put him to bed. I say traditional in an attempt to remind myself to do it again next year, thereby making it a tradition. We'll see.

River with all the loot on Christmas morning. Bear and I only gave him three presents, to represent the presents the wise men gave Jesus. However, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Friends and Grandparents showered him with gifts and he made out like a bandit. You can see from the picture, despite the gifts, the wii remote is getting all the love. Ya just can't win with babies.

These are more pictures from Christmas morning. I personally love him holding Kiss Kiss, as if to say, "Don't worry. I won't forget about you." Noodle even got in on the action. Everyone had a fun time. It took River a minute to get the hang of opening the presents, but once I had opened a few, he got really into the paper shredding... not so much taking the paper off the presents, as shredding the paper that was already on the ground, but as long as he was having fun. We spent Christmas night with our friends Aaron and Diane, who had prepared an awesome dinner. We do miss being with our families on Christmas, but we are never lonely and we are always fed well. We have great friends and that is the best present of all.

As Porky Pig would say, "That's all folks." We hope your Christmas was merry and bright!