Max's Wild Rumpus

Our little Max-man turned 1 a few days ago. It is still kind of hard to believe. We are loving looking back at pictures and videos from when he was born and his first year of life and seeing how much he has changed, and how much he has stayed the same. He has always been our strong, determined little Max Attack. And always will be, I'm sure! He makes life so much fun, we just can't get enough of him. He's growing up much too fast, but what can we do???

We were lucky enough to have my parents drive into town the night before Max's b-day. He has been spoiled the past few days with constant attention, new toys, and the best playmates and book readers the little guy could ask for. He is having so much fun he won't even take his naps. Another perk was that my mom was here to help me throw Max a party! I have been busy trying (and usually failing) to study so aside from getting invitations out I didn't think about it much until the past few days. But we had a lot of fun putting it all together, and it turned out adorable. What better theme than "Where the Wild Things Are" for our Max?

We did an ocean cake with Max and his boat and a #1 on top, and Wild Thing cupcakes. They really were pretty easy to do, and lots of fun.

We had a spread of meatballs, chips and cowboy caviar, mango salsa, bread and spinach dip, goldfish, fruit salad, and 'forest' veggie cups.

We tied balloons and hung streamers to go with the jungle-ish theme.

And here's our handsome birthday boy!
Vati and Daddy teaching Max how to dunk the ball.
Max basically took zero naps all day so he definitely could have been in a better mood. But once his friends got there and things got going he had a great time. Here he is with friend Alec - Max liked taking off his hat and trying to put it back on. They are the cutest little buddies.
And with friend Grant - Max kept trying to steal his food. Basically he walked around from person to person looking for handouts (that's our little puppy for you).
We had a little contest putting together a Where the Wild Things Are puzzle - girls won. We also showed a little slideshow of pictures of Max that Joe put together.
Then Max got to open presents! His friends were so nice to bring him awesome new toys (& an adorable shirt!) He was too distracted by the first toy to really get into it - plus he's only 1.
Then it was cake time! I was so excited to watch Max shove sugar into his mouth like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. Well, it didn't exactly happen like that.

We all sang to him and he looked around and noticed everyone staring at him and smiling, and then he started clapping. So cute.
Max didn't really know what to do with the cake at first so I gave him a taste of frosting off my finger and then broke up some little pieces for him. He definitely seemed to like it for a little while.

But the fun faded fast. He was tired, tired, tired and just wasn't loving the sugar thing. I put some blueberries in the middle of all that frosting and he found and ate those instead.
But ... he cheered up when he started feeding Mom and Dad.

What a good little sharer.

Once he couldn't take it anymore we cleaned him up in the bath, and then he got to run around in a half-buttoned shirt and play with his friends and toys until he crashed.

. . . with his dad and his bottle (yep, finally weaned!) If he doesn't sleep soundly tonight then something is definitely wrong