Today we did it. We reached the biggest and best milestone of all time....Our sweet cub turned 1. As I type this my eyes are once again welling up with tears because I had made a deal with God that he would send me one of his angels to look after here on earth with the promise that he would also be a Lost Boy...looks like I got shafted on half the deal. Guess I'll take it though ;)
But enough sappiness, that isn't typically in my nature anyway...The day actually began the night before when I decorated Jackson's room while he slept. When he woke up this morning we watched him oooooinng and awwwinnnnggg on his monitor while he played with the balloon I tied to his bed and was pulling on the streamers.
He had no idea what all these things were so when we turned the light on in his room he was sooooooo excited and happy to see the neat things tied to his crib.
Someone had an extreme case of bed head so we put a crown on REAL quick and decided to leave it on for the remainder of the day!
After opening some pretty amazing presents we went downstairs and had some birthday bananas...
And for lunch Jackson wanted to have a picnic in the park, this kid seriously LOVES being outside so when he asked us to take him on his birthday it was a no-brainer.
He frolicked in the trees...
But then it got a little chilly so I wrapped him up in a blanket.
Shortly after Jack showed up with lunch but we decided to move to his car for some added warmth.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent reading, playing and
trying to nap. Jack came home from work a little early so we sang Jackson 'Happy Birthday' for about the 8th time and let him blow out some candles on his very own cupcake...
He instead tried to light himself on fire so we blew them out for him. I honestly thought the kid would devour a chocolate cupcake but as it turns out he wasn't too interested in it--he actually spit it out and wanted nothing to do with it! Like father, like son I guess.
After dessert we then went to dinner at one of Jackson's favorite Asian restaurants where he LOVES a dish called the 'Tiger Cry'.
He tells me he likes it because of the name and because it takes a tough baby such as himself to eat it, (it's a little spicy people). Jackson and I usually share this dish and I can honestly say that he eats about 1/4 of it every time and I typically have enough to take home. I know. Crazy.
What can I say? The lion cub really likes his meat....
Once we got home from dinner Jackson opened his last gift. It was the 'big' gift and he had been patiently waiting for it since Christmas. He finally got his bike! Santa had actually brought it to him on Christmas but he told us Jackson received sooooooo many presents that he wanted this one to be significant and to please wait for his birthday to give it to him. So we did. We would never argue with the old man in the red suit.
To cap off the most spectacular of days Jack read our sweet boy,
On the Night You Were Born. It was one of his birthday presents and I would highly recommend it to any parent for their little one. I had to walk out of the room as Jack was reading it because I just cannot handle my baby becoming a boy...
Thank you to all of our sweet family and friends for your kind words, gestures, emails, cards, gifts, texts, phone calls, etc, etc, etc. It is because of each and every one of you that the life of our Jackson will always and forever be filled with love--and that is after all, the best gift a King could ever ask for.
