Charlie turned 1 year old yesterday! This picture was taken a few weeks ago as his birthday was celebrated on three separate occasions. We celebrated his birthday with cake about 3 weeks when Nana and Granddad were visiting. All of the pictures that I managed to take were ones of Charlie trying to eat the cake remains directly off the plate. His second celebration happened when Aunt Amy (Mamie) came to visit last weekend. For that celebration, Henry and Mamie made homemade sugar cookies with gobs of buttercream frosting (delicious cookies, by the way - so soft and lethal. One cookie can give you the sugar shakes. Just imagine their effect on a 3 and 1 year old!). Half of the cookies were frosted with pink icing, and the other half were frosted with green icing. Finally, last night, on his actual birthday, we had our third and final celebration. We went to a Mexican restaurant. For dessert, we had ice cream and churros (did I mention that I am now addicted to churros? It is my Latin roots). The boys each got a balloon although only one balloon arrived home intact. We drove to the restaurant separately. I warned Mike as he was loading the children into his car, "
Don't let Charlie hold his balloon on the drive home. I am worried he will somehow wrap the string around his neck or pop the balloon with his little razor sharp baby teeth and then choke on the balloon pieces. Henry can hold the balloons." Mike said, "
Eh, I think it will be fine - Its a two minute drive." I was a few cars behind them and I noticed a red balloon on the side of the road. That looks familiar, I thought... sure enough, as they were driving home, Henry convinced Mike to roll down his window and then he somehow let go of his balloon and (I believe) gave it a slight push in the direction of the open window and well, we came home with one balloon. Charlie's balloon.
The minute we arrived home, I think Mike and I were suddenly and simultaneously hit by the additive effect of raising a baby plus a toddler for a full year. We were overcome by exhaustion. Literally. It was all we could do to bathe the kids and put them to bed. In fact, the kids went to bed very early, which means that they cried out after lights out for a few minutes longer than usual but we were too tired to even feel bad about it. Actually, we laughed. We laughed when they cried out in harmony. I tried to summon the energy to finish cleaning the kitchen, to wash the bottles for the next morning, but I had to rest before I could tackle that job. We both crashed on the couch to recharge our batteries. We both fell asleep for a little bit. Then, we woke up and went to bed at 9:30 pm! This never happens. We didn't set our alarm clocks (on a weekday, of all things!) and woke up after 7am. That is a lot of sleep, but I still feel tired today. In fact, I must look more tired and more disheveled than usual because this morning when I was dropping the kids off at daycare, someone asked me with an empathetic head tilt and tone, "Oh, is Mike out of town for work this week?" That is never a good sign.
*"Charlie Bear" is Charlie's nickname. It is our creative and unexpected twist on the classic children's toy
Teddy Bear. I mean it, look it up. This
Teddy Bear is a real thing.
