The party went great! It was very small - only my parents and my grandparents, so only 4 guests! But perfect for Matthew, as he knows them all and it was a gathering size he was happy with. It would have been more perfect with Bennie and Sarah and Thea here, but Thea is colicky and they have decided to just stay around their home (they don't have transport) for the first 6 weeks to make life easier. Definitely fair enough! She's 5 weeks old now. Bennie is still off work on paid paternity leave, because he works for my dad and my dad ROCKS as a boss - he gives the guys 6 weeks paid paternity leave because he saw how helpful that would have been for me if Neil had been given that long when Arthur was newly born! He's a great boss/daddy! :)
Anyway! So we had a teeny tiny party. None of Neil's side of the family could be there, because his mum and youngest sister live miiiiles away up north, and we had the party on a weekday (Matthew's actual birthday last Thursday), so Neil's brother was working.
The boys' little cousin, Ella, had her second birthday the same day! They were all busy that day (with work and birthday stuff) so we're going to meet up with them either this weekend or next. Probably next, as nothing has been arranged yet!
We left the timing of the party open till the day before, as my family were flexible and happy for us to let them know the time at the last minute, and Matthew can't decide whether he's dropping his morning nap or not, right now. If he only had one nap, the WHOLE day's dynamics change. So, he was having a run of days with two naps, and we made the party for 11am, after he would be up from his morning nap. The timing worked really well, which was great! It also meant that we served FOOD, which we never ever have occasion to do, so it was kind of nerve wracking! It went so well though. We bought food that was light and easy for anyone to help themselves to - just salad and french bread and ham and cheese and stuff. And some gooorrrgeous strawberries and raspberries! I was having some light spotting with my pregnancy so Mummy helped with all the food when it was time to lay it out, and that was great!
We opened presents first, and then ate lunch, and then did the "Happy Birthday" with the cake. We saved the pop-up activity tent/tunnel thing to be opened after all that, because then we could take it straight out in the garden and let the little ones play with it all they liked, having done everything else we had planned to do already.
Okay, photos!
Here's the very first thing we did - Matthew opened his birthday cards! See the blue envelope there, next in line for Arthur's envelope ripping frenzy?! That was a card from Esther, waaay over in the States! It's always so much fun to get things through the post from people I have actually met through my Diaryland diaries!! :) Thank you Esther!
And opening a present - Arthur was quite possessive about the presents, and was in a frenzy to rip the wrapping paper off them by himself! It was hard to keep him back a little to let Matthew join in!
Matthew did enjoy opening the presents, but he was more interested in eating the paper (ever the paper-eater since his first few months!). We did purposely choose toys that would be of interest to both the boys, and even a couple that were better suited to Arthur's age, but with a broad age-range which Matthew was at the start of, because Matthew will grow into them, Arthur will get loads out of them too, and there are perlenty enough toys for Matthew around the place as it is. He is only one, so he doesn't actually MIND that his birthday presents are going to be mostly commandeered by Arthur for a while!
We got the pop-up tent, which is a definite sharing toy, and which we know they will BOTH love equally even now. We got a Playskool gears thingy, which has a ton of cogs on a whirly board. It's actually not that exciting. You can remove all the cogs and put them in different orders and watch it all whirl round to the music. Anyway, Matthew's attention is caught by it for a moment, and Arthur LOVES it! It's a 9 months + toy though.
Here's a photo of the boys being interested in that toy (from behind, you can't see the toy), with a great-grandfather who was also rather taken with it, hehe!
We also got them (I mean, Matthew!) a Vtech bus with letters and numbers and music and all sorts. It's age 1-3 and we wanted to get them something electronic and "learning" based. They both LOVE it! Arthur wants to play with it constantly and gets soooo frustrated when Matthew grabs it or presses a random button to hear some music when Arthur is working his way through the letter buttons to hear the sounds they make! It gets HOURS of play every day at the moment.
My parents asked what to get Matthew, and Neil and I had wanted to buy ride on toys for Matthew's first birthday. We wanted to choose something for each of the boys, sort of as a "set", because Arthur never gets outdoor toys as gifts, since his birthday is in the winter. He doesn't have ANY outdoor toys (except a tiny falling-apart push car) so it would leave him out if we just got Matthew a ride-on toy for outside and not Arthur. We also want to get the boys trikes (something that Matthew can grow with, and another that is age appropriate for Arthur to use and grow with too), so that we can take them out to the swings and stuff. But the ride-on toys would be for the back garden.
Anyway, we couldn't find what we were looking for in the end, and ran out of time, so we went for the pop-up stuff and a few other things instead. We still planned to buy them the outdoor things when we move to a new house (soonish!) which will hopefully have a much bigger garden. We plan to make a bigger garden a high priority when we look for houses. We'll have a whole bunch of little kids who need to burn off energy and spend lots of time outdoors, while we're living at our next home, so we need to make sure it has the appropriate energy-burning space! :)
Anyway, gosh this isn't a quick queasy entry after all! Actually I've stopped writing 3 times now. Once because I felt too queasy, then to eat the bread rolls and cheese that I knew would make me feel a bit better (they did, yay!) and finally to resettle Matthew, who woke in a COLD sweat, crying and anxious! Poor lovey! I wonder if he had a bad dream? He settled back to sleep quite quickly with me holding him for a while though, and I had no trouble putting him back down. So it's getting late, but I want to finish this entry. Where was I?
Oh yes! So we eventually asked my parents to buy a ride-on car that both the boys could enjoy. They only had one day to buy it while they were here, so I reserved a Bob the Builder Scoop digger at Argos! It's very stable and has a walker back so Matthew can use it as a walker before he's ready to ride it. I knew Arthur would love it anyway! It has sounds and the Bob the Builder theme too. They both really love it! The seat is unexpectedly high so Matthew's feet can't even touch the ground, but he likes being pushed around on it, and he loves walking - pushing Arthur while Arthur rides it! And he loves pushing the buttons to make the music and doing a funny little boppy dance :)
Here is a teeny tiny video (a few seconds long) of Matthew part-way through unwrapping the Bob the Builder digger, pausing to take a few steps! Only a few, and the camera angle really didn't show his actual steps very clearly, but it's his FIRST steps caught on video so I have to include it! :) He is attempting to walk in the house really frequently now. He takes anywhere between 3 and 8 steps at a time. If he's too excited about it, he falters and doesn't manage many steps, but if he's relaxed he just walks till he reaches where he wants to be!
Anyway, video clip!
And here's another of Matthew on the digger just after it was unwrapped and put together :) Arthur was SO eager to have his turn, bless him! He said to Matthew, "Get off!" at one point, and was desperate to push the buttons too!
He did get his turn though! Here he is playing "fwaffic jams" with the digger and the bus! He looooves making (or being part of) fwaffic jams :)
Okay, what came next? I didn't take any photos during the food-eating, because I came over exhausted and weak and painfully hungry, so I just sat at the buffet table and ATE ravenously, haha! Everybody else was more sociable and ate in the living room. Matthew had his highchair in there with the crafts mat underneath, so he could be part of it too. He enjoyed all the food. I still totally LOVE that we did baby-led weaning with him! He can eat anything that adults eat, in any form. We don't have to cut his food up much more than we do our own. Nothing is a "will he?/won't he?" new food because he is used to it all from an early age. Arthur, on the other hand, pretty much only ate the insides of a couple of sausage rolls and some grated cheese. Matthew even had tomato salad with parsley and vinegraitte (mmm, pregnant mmm!)! I will do baby-led weaning every time with my future babies. Oh, that reminds me! My mum said she read an online news article (British, maybe the BBC?) the other day which I now can't find for anything, which said how researchers are finding (or something??) that giving a baby finger foods from the start of solids is the most natural way to introduce food, and that feeding babies purees actually has evidence of potentially causing later feeding problems! This is definitely so with Arthur, but then there are plenty of puree-fed babies who don't have troubles later on, I suppose. But that's just why we did it - it IS the most natural thing to do. I can't fathom where feeding babies pureed food ever came from in the first place! It seems crazy to me now that we've done this fab, easy, and suddenly rather "obvious" thing with Matthew. I wish I could find that article, because I'm interested in reading more about the latest thoughts/findings on the subject. I honestly think that eventually society as a whole is going to finally cotton onto the fact that there is a better way to start babies on food than make it into goop. I think babies are MADE to eat food as it is.
Oops, off on a soapbox-y tangent there, sorry! I can't even remember what I was saying.... Oh, so no photos during lunch. I've just realised how my nausea is easing off! Yay! It eases off around midnight (urgh, is that how late it is?!) and doesn't trouble me overnight. I suddenly realised what I had just been writing about and how it hadn't bothered my stomach to do so! ;)
Anyway! After lunch came birthday cake! I was NOT thrilled with my attempt at a homemade birthday cake this year. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do till the last minute, and then finally I figured I would do a stacking blocks design, because Matthew loves stacking blocks at the moment. I did pastel colours because it was easiest with the food colouring/icing options! BUT, when I assembled the whole thing (at FOUR AM the night before, I might add - it took me all darn night to do it for some crazy reason!), it didn't support its own weight and all the nice cube shaped cake pieces buckled and their icing broke and I got soooooo cross with it that I could have thrown it on the floor and stamped on it! ;) But in the end I just (lamely) put two blocks next to each other, decorated them with a little sugarpaste "ribbon" to look like parcels, and put a message on the top. I wasn't happy with it. It was a crap design. But oh well. It tasted nice, so that's important! :)
Here are a couple of photos of the cake moment - the boys clapping after blowing the candle out, which I did in the end! Matthew couldn't blow and I meant to help Arthur blow, but he didn't blow at that moment and my blow was stronger than I thought so - poof! - out it went! Never mind :)
And Arthur poking his finger in the cake!
Neil was behind the video camera so we asked my daddy to bring the cake in. Here's the little video clip that Neil took, of us singing Happy Birthday to Matthew:
Arthur was desperate for cake! Here they are enjoying some:
A random photo of Nana being kept busy by her little grandsons! :)
After that, Arthur helped Matthew open the pop-up tent/tunnel set:
And then we all went out in the garden, where we set the pop-up stuff out in no time, and the boys had a great time playing in it, while the adults acted like papparazi, hehe!
Little video clip of the same (I don't think there really was a spider in the tunnel as Arthur was suggesting at the end!):
They also played with the digger for a while outside:
And then they thoroughly trashed the pop-up stuff!! ;)
That was the end of the party. My grandparents left and then my parents had to go so they could fit a quick visit to see Thea before they had to catch their evening ferry back to France. They came 3 days before the party though, so we did see quite a bit of them! They saw the boys and Thea every day - us in the morning and Thea in the afternoons :) That was lovely.
After the party the boys played a little longer outside, and then we brought the stuff inside and we all went for a nap. After nap time, it was just a normal day. They did play with the tunnel bit (their favourite part!) inside for a while:
But mostly they just played as normal. Arthur played a lot with the Vtech bus, and Matthew did his usual thing, pottering around playing with things. He has this sweet thing he does at the moment - he drives cars and trains around EVERYWHERE. He has such a huge attention span for his age, for this activity! He has been doing it since he was soooo little! I love it because he makes "brrrmmm" sounds as he pushes them around the furniture or floor! So sweet! I also love that he does it because he has copied Arthur doing it :) Matthew often likes to do his normal activities with a box on his head! That funny little muffin, hehe!
And that is ALL of the birthday photos! Yay! I finally got them posted! Almost a week after his birthday but oh well! I have so much else to write about - I soooo want to write about the sleep issues with both the boys and what we're doing about it. And Tumble Tots! I want to write about Tumble Tots! And Arthur's talking AGAIN. And the latest on the job/move situation. And Matthew's antics (and how we're only partially coping with them, yeurgh!). And more photos, since his birthday. And um. I'm sure there's lots more. But I will just leave this as a birthday entry for now, and come back to do more when I'm able. Might not be immediately, but as soon as I can! Some stuff is really pressing me to get out here, so I will try to write again soon! Thank you for all the lovely comments after my last entry on Matthew's birthday, and all the birthday wishes for him! :)
