Nathan's 1st Birthday! Photo heavy (be warned!)

Thank you so much for all the sweet birthday wishes for Nathan! :) I can't believe my littlest man is ONE already! Wow.

His birthday went really really well, and I'm so happy with the whole day! :) I have a million million photos, but I will try to be selective for this blog post, hehe! My last post was the first time I ever used the Blogger thingy for posting a photo (usually I just use html and post directly from my Photobucket account), and I've noticed the photos come out a lot smaller at a glance than I'm used to, BUT you can click on them and see them full-size (which is BIGGER than I'm used to!). And it saves me the tiresome step of uploading everything to Photobucket and editing it a bit there too, as I can just upload to Blogger from my laptop directly, hooray!

So, Nathan's birthday! I MUSTN'T be too long-winded, because it's after midnight and I'm already craaazy to be updating this late. I'm doomed, though, because long-winded is my middle name. Oh well! :)

Nathan woke up at about quarter to six in the morning on his birthday, fussing. This isn't unusual for Nathan, and by that time of the morning he's always in bed next to me, so it's fairly easy to resettle him. I usually only half come out of sleep, offer him the breast and pat him on the bottom if he's still awake after that, and basically doze right back off. But that morning I checked the clock. It was still dark outside so I had no idea whether it was nearly morning or the middle of the night. I LOVE that he woke at that time, because he was born at 5.42am, so I like to think that he woke up at the very time he was born a year ago! :) He went back to sleep after a breastfeed and me patting his bottom a bit. Then he woke for the day at 6.50am, I think.

He had a good day! He was smiley and happy the WHOLE day long. He also suddenly started being excited about walking a lot more than he has so far. Since he took his first few steps, he has been taking just a few at a time, but not really seeming overly interested in doing so. He has done it maybe once a day or once every other day, but has preferred to crawl. Suddenly on his birthday he was setting out frequently, huge open-mouthed beaming smile on his face and arms all tensely outstretched, excited about his new skill! It was sooooo cute. He was doing it a new way too, than all the times before. Until yesterday, he was taking big-ish steps and trying to stride sometimes, and falling pretty quickly. Yesterday he started taking these tiny little birdie steps, so very sweet to watch - just a few inches at a time, like one of his little feet ahead in length. He was much more controlled doing it that way, and took more like 6 or 7 steps at a time consistently. Today he has done more than than, and walked 12 or 13 steps to Neil (with great excitement) when Neil walked in the door from work this evening! :) He has been walking ALL day, and trying to set up opportunities to practise it. On his birthday he would walk to me from Neil, and then do an excited sort of gaspy inhale, and then turn right around and walk back to Neil, do the same excited squeally gasp, and walk back to me again! He suddenly loved walking on his birthday! :)

He had a morning nap (hence looking a bit sleepy in some of the photos!), and as soon as he got up we brought his presents out. Arthur and Matthew were sooooooo eager and excited for him to start doing "birthday things", and were bugging us all the time to let Nathan start opening his presents! Arthur even asked if we could open Nathan's presents just after he had gone down for his nap, haha! ;) He also commented on how Nathan didn't have many presents! I told him a little baby doesn't NEED many, and we already have a lot of baby toys.

Nathan LOVED his rainmaker shaker, and his rattled drum soooo much! Here are some of the 18 photos (!!) of The Present-Opening! ;)

Getting ready to open the first present....



Nathan just wanted to shake the rainmaker in it's wrapping paper, he was not interested in tearing it off at all! I think he preferred it shiny and holographic, hehe!



Discovering his rainmaker shaker:



He just banged it and shook it for aaaaages, and frustrated the boys because they could barely wait for him to move onto the next present! ;)



Matthew helping Nathan to open his rattle drum (Matthew soooo would have loved this present all for himself!):



Nathan's instant reaction to the drum:



Soooo happy to use a beater on his new drum after I showed him what it was for:



Banging away happily!...



Bit of a mixed photo of my three boys - Nathan finding out that sticking a drum stick into your mouth too far is not so fun; Matthew being fed-up that he isn't allowed to play with the drum right at that moment; and Arthur being excited about BIRTHDAY TIME at laaaaaaaast, hehe! He is big on birthdays! ;)



Last present, a 'Wheels on the Bus' board book from Nana:



Me reading the new book to Nathan:



My sweet little birthday boy after lunch (hence removal of lunch-covered top, haha!):



Sweet little pie, with sole toothie visible - the next-door neighbour to that tooth STILL hasn't come through, I can't believe it! It has been sooooo close for like a week! Judging by the drool in the photo, it should be here soon! ;)



The weather on Nathan's birthday (he LOVED standing at the window and watching it!):



A bit later on I found him intently browsing his new book from Nana! He really seems to like it, which is great! :)



Mid-afternoon, after his afternoon nap, we brought out the birthday cake (another thing the older boys (Arthur in particular!) had been begging for all day! They hadn't seen it yet as we kept it hidden). Here's a little video (hope it works - first time trying it at Blogger!) of the singing and candle-blowing bit :)



Then we ate cake! :) I gave Nathan a slice and didn't expect him to do much with it, but he surpassed his brothers on their first birthdays (and our expectations!) and practically inhaled it! He seemed to really enjoy it, and at it ALL up! Once he finished, he actually crawled away from his plate towards Matthew's, since Matthew had really not touched his cake much at all, and ate a good handful or so of that before we managed to stop him! He tried the sugarpaste cow, which I'm not that crazy about, but he spat that out so that's okay! ;)









We cleaned up, and then the boys played. Neil did lots of rough and tumble and tickle-time with the boys, which they loved! I will have to post some photos of Matthew and Arthur having their time with Daddy next time I post! I got some sweet photos! :) But here's a little video clip of Nathan having some time with Daddy. He usually belly laughs like crazy when he's being "eaten" or tickled, but he was somewhat distracted by being allowed to hold Daddy's glasses!!



We had shepherd's pie for dinner, and he was happy as anything and ate a good portion!



After dinner he played a bit, and then we ran a bath, he climbed the stairs all by himself for the first time:



And had a bath, where he played with his new bath squirters that Grandma gave him for Christmas (we only opened those presents a couple of days ago, so we saved the squirters for Nathan's birthday bath!):



All clean and dressed for bed! :)



This is one of my favourite photos from the day! Arthur came over and gave him such a sweet cuddle. He really loves his little brothers, and he can be so so sweet with them. They adore him too!



Phew, I think that's it! Sorry it's so photo-heavy, I hope it didn't cause anyone trouble to view this post! Hope you enjoyed all the pics and videos, it took forever to do this post after all! But it was worth it. I wish I had made such an effort to document Arthur's last TWO birthdays like this, because it's lovely to look back on. I will have to go back and do that when I get the chance! :)