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2005-11-09 - 10.38pm previous entry next entry

Arthur's First Birthday!!!

Arthur is a big boy now!!! He is one year old today. I can not believe it. But also, it somehow feels normal. Some naive part of me had this idea that he would suddenly morph into a different child on the morning of his birthday - a "real" toddler, different from the little baby I have known thus far. But of course that was stupid and he's still exactly the same Arthur as he was yesterday and all the days before! Only one day cuter! :) And a big one-year-old boy instead of a monthy-baby!

Thank you so much for the messages and notes and emails (thank you for the lovely ecard, Jaya!!), and also to those of you who sent wonderful cards and even presents for Arthur!!! Also special thanks to Alex and Megan for the special birthday video for Arthur! It feels like the whoooole worldwide web is extended family to us! It's so lovely. Thank you all so much!!!

Arthur has had a really nice day!!! It's 9.30 now and he has been asleep for about 2 hours. He was really tired and ready for bed, rubbing his little eyes and generally acting like a birthday boy at the end of his big day!

My parents are here!!! It is so great to have them around. I love them and miss them so much, it's just sooooooooooo nice to see them in person. They spent most of the day here with me and Arthur yesterday, and today my dad had to go into London so my mummy spent the morning with Arthur and me and Neil, for Arthur's birthday. That was super special to me, partly because I love to share special occasions with my mummy, but also because she was there at Arthur's birth, and it feels like everything has come full circle to have her here again at the same time a year later. It felt really special. We watched the clock around mid/late morning, because Arthur was born at 11.28am. Neil or my mum kept saying, "Oooh, this time last year you were probably...." Neil insisted Arthur was crowning at 11.18am! Hehe. I told him there was no way he was crowning for ten minutes! It made it all EXTRA official when 11.28 had passed and he had definitely been in the world one whole year!

I keep thinking of Arthur's birth at the moment. It was so hard. Weird to think that a year ago, ALL of yesterday I was in established labour, the ENTIRE night before I had not had one wink of sleep due to painful contractions every 10 minutes the whole night long, and then I spent last night in the hospital with stalled labour and a fever, and then finally spent all this morning pushing him out!!!! It seemed CRAZY when I thought about it in that context today and yesterday! It seemed such a long time to be in labour. But I absolutely cherish the memories I have of labour, the whole thing, even the bad bits - though they were mighty hard - and I LOVE to relive it in my mind. I feel so fond of the experience. I'm so glad of it all, that I have been blessed enough to experience it.

We were just talking this morning about how it was a hard night, and we were all remembering this and that about it (Neil and Mummy were right there by my side throughout the whole thing), and then Mummy said she couldn't believe it was a year ago. I said, "Well, we'll be there again in just SEVEN more months!!" (less, actually), and she said (with exaggerated dramatism), "Yes... You mad fools!!!" Hehehe! She said she could never have coped with a small gap between children. I am kind of excited about it myself! Although I know it will be hard.

Yaargh, what am I writing?! This is not my pregnancy diary! And I'm supposed to be writing about Arthur's birthday!! Well, it DOES have connections to birth and stuff. I love to think back on every nanosecond of Arthur's life with us so far. It has been the most wonderful time, hard or not. Wonderfully wonderful.

Okay so Arthur opened his presents from us today, and he will open presents from other people at his party on Saturday. He did open all his cards and loved them! He opened his present from Sharon (thank you Sharon!!) which was a GREAT book with flaps concealing farm animals (this is exactly the kind of book Arthur loves most at the moment) and the last flap in the book had a mirror under it. He was so surprised to see himself under the last flap! He pressed his nose to it and stared and stared, and kept surfacing to grin widely at us, hehe! He's so funny :) Thank you so much Sharon! I could not have picked a better book for Arthur myself!

He also opened a card and a lovely present that came from Frances (thank you Frances!) - a little boat for the bath that has a fish which you pull on a string at the back, and it makes the boat GO!!! He was too tired for his bath tonight so we'll test it out tomorrow. Thank you so much Frances!!!! Arthur loves the boat already, even without the bath! The package arrived at lunch time today and that made for extra excitement for Arthur, with the doorbell ringing and a postman bearing a package just for Arthur!!! We opened it straight away, and he has literally spent most of his birthday with the detachable sailor sticking out of his mouth, haha! He loves to bite on the sailor's head! It is definitely a favourite! :)

We got him a mini trampoline! He just loves to jump on beds, holding onto the headboard, so we thought we'd get him a real trampoline that is safe for little tiny ones. It has a handlebar for him to hold onto. We have to put it together tomorrow but I know he'll love it. I'm a bit worried about accidents on it, but I have seen other babies his age on them at the mother and baby group and I plan to always stay like 0.13 inches from him at all times when he's using it!

We were going to get him a rocking thingy but we aren't sure he'll use one much now. He is so active and doesn't sit still for anything! He likes to jump and bounce so the trampoline seemed more fitting somehow. We also got him a Stand Up Ball Blast which he absolutely LOVES!! In fact, I don't have any photos of him playing with it from today because he was always having so much fun with it that I was always joining in, instead of taking photos! I did take some camcorder footage of him with it though, because it plays funky music, and as you know, Arthur loves anything musical. He has not really been dancing or anything yet, but today he was standing at his Ball Blast thingy and pressed the button (over and over!) for the music to play, and he bopped and danced up and down and side to side while the music played! He stopped when the music stopped, pushed the button, and started over again when the music played again! It was too cute. He always danced with a huge smile on his face! He loves that thing!

We also got him Cut-and-Play Vegetables! They are supposed to be age 3-8 because they are pretend play items, but Arthur loves the fruits that he has had for months now. When he was 5 months old, I took him to the church creche and they had loads of cut and play food, and the main admirers of the things were BABIES, not 3-8 year olds! They were the first things I ever saw him automatically gravitate to and stay interested in for a long time without wanting to play with all the other things around. So I bought him the fruit package. They have had SO much use! He loves to pull them apart (they are in two or three parts, velcroed together) and chew on them, or roll them on the floor. Or put them in and out of cups, bowls, the toy basket, the brick bucket, etc! So I knew he would love the vegetables :)

He had some good meals and a LITTLE more to drink than usual, plus his mama milk whenever he asked for it (a lot). I gave him an Organix gingerbread man and he LOVED it! I have been itching to get him those since I saw Jaya having one when went to visit one time! They are not for babies under 12 months so he couldn't have one then. I am amazed they have absolutely no sugar in them, just flour, oil, ginger and raising agent!! They are really nice considering that! Arthur LOVES them, and has absolutely no trouble biting and chewing and munching them down, even though they are REALLY hard thick biscuits. It takes him ages to chew them up but he works hard at it, which shows me how much he really likes them! He is used to softer finger food. He eats toast and hard things well, but even those are easier than the gingerbread men!

I am excited that he's old enough for Stage 3 baby food now! I bought one single jar of stage 3 spaghetti bolognese the other day, just to see what it looked like in comparison to the stuff he has had for months. I think he will manage it just fine. He eats very lumpy food that I make him. If he particularly doesn't want certain lumps then he just spits them out!

I am getting off track! So he had good food today. He had a great afternoon nap, which was a relief because Neil and I were sooooooooo tired. We were up so late last night wrapping Arthur's presents and talking about Neil's job thingy and whether he should accept it or not. I need to write about that, but this is not the entry for it. Today I have just felt breathlessly tired and had a bad headache by the afternoon, so I'm really grateful that Arthur slept well. He napped an hour and a half without stirring, so Neil and I got about that much sleep too. Neil took him downstairs when they woke and didn't disturb me, so I got a little longer.

Arthur loves the outdoors so we wanted to take him out somewhere today. We especially wanted to go somewhere with lots of birds flying about, because one of Arthur's favourite things ever is birds. He just loves them. He likes the ones on water that swim and waddle up to the pushchair, but he MUCH prefers watching more nimble birds, ones that flit and fly and flutter about. So we wanted to do things he loves on his birthday. But we just couldn't think of a good place with lots of birds that was nearby, and then the day just got filled up and I got headachy, and so on.

In the end, we all took a sunset walk just around the corner at a small park, and that turned out to be lovely! It was soooooooooo cold!!!! Arthur loved it, he was cheerful and smiley and chatty and pointy all the way. When we got back our ears were hurting from the cold! We had hot drinks, and Arthur had warm mama milk direct from the source!!

Neil and I didn't buy him a birthday card, because every time I looked in the shops, I didn't like what I saw. Any nice cards seemed to me to be ones that anyone could get for him. I wanted something more personal, that only his mummy and daddy could get him. But the ones like that all said things like, "For you, Son!" and similar messages that irritate the heck out of me, and aren't "us" at all. We never call Arthur, "Son!" so we could never buy a card saying that.

In the end, after our walk, we got out card, glue, paints, glitter, sequins and shiny paper shapes, and made him a birthday card! Arthur was quite upset when I had the paints out because he thought I was going to paint his hand. We made his party invitations last week and they involved me painting his hand with blue finger paint, and then printing his little handprint onto blank cards. I put sparkly stickers on next to the handprints! Inside I wrote in different coloured crayons, "Dear Nana and Grandy (for example), Please come to my party on Saturday 12th of November at 3.30pm. Love from Arthur xxxxx" I wrote letters to go with them, with more details in them. Here's a finished one:

Anyway, Arthur HATED the painting!! I had to do it sooo fast once I realised he hated it! He just hates to have messy hands. It seems he remembers the traumatic incident well, because he cried like he was terrified any time he saw me with a paint pot!!! Oh dear. I have traumatised my little boy with paint on his birthday! Neil had to take him in the kitchen till I was finished with the paints!

Our card is really pwetty! It sparkles and says, "Happy 1st Birthday Arthur" on the front, and inside we wrote that we can't believe he is already one year old, and that it has been the best year of our lives. That he is our sweet little boy, and we love him more than words can say. We both signed it, from, "Mummy and Daddy". I think that is the first time I signed anything, "Mummy". It felt strange, but WONDERFUL!!! I only ever saw those words on cards TO me, from my own parents before. How weird and wonderful that *I* am the mummy now!

Okay, Neil has gone to bed and just came out to complain that he can't sleep with my rattly typing! So I have to cut this short (haha). Here are all the photos from today - hopefully they'll be pretty self-explanatory now that I have written about everything we have done! They are in chronological order...

So that was Arthur's very first birthday. We sang him happy birthday and just gave him as much love and attention as we possibly could today. We love our little man sooooo much!!! I would love to write more about the feelings and things, but I must go to bed, and let Neil sleep too! I have been writing for an hour now and Arthur still hasn't woken. I think he will probably wake soon though.

Today has been so special. My baby is one year old! I feel like I just graduated the first year of Mummy School or something! ;) It's a wonderful feeling. I will finish this entry with a bit of nostalgia...

My teeny tiny boy as he was on this day a year ago! And now as he is a year later:

What a wonderful, terrifying, thrilling, crushingly exhausting, heart-expanding, joyful, exciting year! It has pushed me through my pre-existing limits of my capacity to love and of my ability to cope. Arthur is the most wonderful gift from God EVER. He is my precious little Boo, the absolute treasure of my heart. I love him so so so so very much. Thank you Lord for blessing me with Arthur, and for guiding us through our first year as a family! I pray for many many more, just as happy and special! Thank you Lord!

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