first birthday

Looking back. We celebrated Elijah's first birthday yesterday. It seems like it was just yesterday that we came home from the hospital with a tiny baby in our arms, whose tender skin was irritated by the diaper and was slightly bleeding, so we let him go without a diaper for an hour and he pooped on me. We thought his cries were so loud that we took him out of the bedroom and sat in the living room so as to not wake up the neighbors above us. Little did we know that those cries were nothing compared to the glass-shaking screams he would be capable of a year later.


Off to a good start. I thought we'd take him to have a professional picture taken, but he fell even before breakfast and ended up with a huge red mark under his eye, so a trip to a professional photographer had to be postponed till the bruise heals.

Gifts. After breakfast we opened gifts. He caught on pretty quickly. A couple of times he tried to eat the wrapping paper, but Daddy took it away promptly.


The box in the video contained clothes, which he threw over his shoulder and proceeded to play with the box :)

(Cup)cake


We debated for a while whether to give him cake on his birthday. He wouldn't have known any better, and he probably didn't need the sugar rush. Plus, we didn't want him to know that cake existed. After all, we are trying to train the young taste buds to like the things that are good for him (it's going well so far - he prefers vegetables to pretty much anything except cheese, with broccoli and green beans being all time favorites). We felt there was no reason for him to know that cottage cheese is different from ice cream and wheat bread is not the same thing as chocolate cake. But in the end we (ok, I) broke down and gave him a carrot cake cupcake. To say that he loved it would be a gross understatement.



He had the cupcake after his second nap a couple of hours before dinner. He still ate pretty well at dinner, but once in a while he'd start screaming. The same thing happened today at breakfast. We think he remembers the cupcake and is wondering why he can't have that instead of the Malt-O-Meal. Sorry, Bud, but your next cupcake is at least a year away, and then only maybe. :)