Owen's 1st Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Owen!!!

This past Saturday we celebrated Owen's 1st birthday!  It is almost surreal that he is now a one year old.  It both feels like he has been in our lives longer than just a year, but also like this year has flown by incredibly quickly.

One year ago we were brand new parents just learning what life was like with a newborn.  We were changing diapers constantly, nursing around the clock, and sleep deprived.  To see where he is now, it is amazing the change that happens during the first year of life!

Flashback! Our tiny newborn. 

Brand new life as parents!

Now as Owen is transitioning into toddlerhood, we find ourselves in another new stage.  He is on the verge of walking and while all he says so far is "Mama," he is clearly ready to communicate and does so in other ways.  Whatever this next phase is like, I'm sure it'll have both challenges and joys like Owen's first year did, and we will love it.

We tried to keep Owen's birthday party low key and casual, but I will admit I was kind of excited to decorate haha.  We had our parents, grandparents, and close friends over to celebrate with us.  We mostly just hung out and ate burgers and hot dogs.  We did have a cake smash for Owen and then we played a home video collage of Owen throughout his first year.  We loved celebrating his birthday and are so grateful for the gift God gave us to be his parents.

Click for Owen's First Year Video

Happy first birthday to our baby!

I was super excited to put together this #1 collage of pictures throughout his first year.
We hung it above our fireplace for the party.  

I also wanted to put to use the monthly photos we'd taken of Owen,
so we strung them up here to see how he's changed throughout the year.

I wanted Owen's cake to be healthy as we've made such an effort to help him start off healthy with his nutrition and even changed some of our own diet to do so.  But sadly the two healthy cakes I tried just weren't very cake like!  So we ended up doing a regular not-at-all-good-for-you cake right along with the sugar packed icing.  But honestly he didn't actually eat that much of it, which is what we figured would likely happen.  And sorry Owen but that will likely be most of the sugar you get until your next birthday cake!  : )  It's only because we love you.

Callie's new favorite spot is under the highchair... and for good reason and she is literally showered with treats from above.

Cake smash time!

Dad helping him get the idea.

His message is pretty clear when he is done.

Immediately regretting his decision to toss the cake.  Haha not really.  When he pushed it off his tray everyone clapped and cheered and we scared him a little.

Pop-Pop and Gangy

Grandpa and Grandma

Boys will be boys.  Daddy-baby time is always so fun!

A birthday bug bite...

Saturday morning when Owen woke up, we noticed (it was impossible to miss) a massive swollen bump on the side of his head.  It was huge and out of nowhere.  He went to sleep totally fine... he hadn't hit his head the day before... we were clueless what this sudden spot was from.  At first we really panicked.  Like I said we knew he hadn't hit his head and it was crazy swollen and almost a purple color.  Our first reaction was to think we needed to cancel the party and take him to the ER because obviously having a massive swollen bump on you head for no known reason isn't good.

We decided to call Nurse Kari (otherwise known as Owen's Aunt Kari... but sometimes we switch to nurse mode instead of aunt mode).  She helped calm us down.  Since Owen didn't have a fever and he was acting completely fine and normal, it seemed like he was okay.  Actually while we were on the phone with Kari we looked closer at the bump and sort of saw a spot in the middle of it that looked like a bug bite.  We definitely didn't like the fact that we didn't know for sure what had happened, but we ended up feeling pretty confident that he had gotten a bug or spider bite of some kind during the night.  Owen has had bad reactions to bug bites before but this was seriously huge, and I hated that it was on his head of all places.  His head looked deformed from that side it was so swollen, but we didn't cancel the party and just carried on like normal.

During the party of course everyone noticed the bump (again, it was pretty impossible to not notice) and we rehashed how we thought it was a bug bite over and over.  We ended up giving him some Benadryl and after the party was over we attempted to draw a circle around the swollen spot to watch if it grew any more or not.  It was super difficult to draw that circle with a squirmy baby who did not like what we were doing.  It was a poor job at best.  Thankfully it didn't get any bigger, and actually when he woke up the next morning it was pretty much 100% back to normal.  The swelling was completely gone, and it actually was easier then to see that it definitely was some sort of bite.  Poor baby.  

So for the million pictures we took on his birthday, a lot of them are tainted with a purple swollen bump on the side of his face.  That's the story with the spot on his head that you likely noticed in some of the above pictures.  Here are some pictures post party after we tried to draw around it.

And in case you were wondering, no I could not narrow down the pictures any more than this.  I love photos in general, and of course I even more so love pictures of my little turkey : )  

Happy birthday, Owen!  We love you so much.