Aiden's first birthday

There are a lot of birthdays in our family this week. Julie's birthday was Friday and Aiden turned one year old on Saturday. My mom and sister-in-law (Bethany) have birthdays next week (happy early birthday!). Overall, it was a pretty busy weekend at our house. Julie's family made the trip up to Baltimore on Friday night, and we all went to Ciao Bistro for Julie's birthday. The next day we got up early to prepare for Aiden's birthday party (some of us earlier than others....like my wife, who woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep!). It was mostly family, but our friends Tara & Phil (from whom we bought our house) and their kids Maia (4) and Leo (2) were there, along with a friend of Julie's from work, Dana, and her son Mason (1) also joined us for the festivities. Julie's great uncle Bob,a minister, gave a brief dedication ceremony for Aiden. Afterwards we enjoyed very good weather and grilled out hotdogs and burgers, followed by cake & ice cream.

I am not sure what the best part was but some of the highlights for me were:

1) Seeing Aiden's delight with all of his new toys. I think he went from average to spoiled overnight. In addition to all the great new gifts, Julie picked up a few things at a garage sale the weekend before, so I feel like he has enough new stuff to last him until he turns 3.

2) Seeing his reaction to cake (or sugar for that matter). People may have noticed that he hasn't really been allowed sugar, so this birthday cake was something quite new to his palate. He didn't seem to know what to do with the chocolate cake on his birthday, but I caught him eating some cake crumbs off the floor the next day so it must have agreed with him. Steve also slipped him some donut pieces while Julie was asleep (her turn) this morning (Shhhhh!).

3) Aiden interacting with Patrick (Julie's younger brother). Those two seemed to have a great time all weekend. Patrick seems to be very good with children (maybe because he is so young at heart himself). Aiden was also fascinated with Patrick's beard. He has never seen a full beard on me (probably out of the realm of possibilities actually).

4)The how old are you game. Julie taught Aiden to raise one finger when people asked how old he was. I have to tell you it was pretty cute. Now it's the day after and he'll do it on command....not on command....actually pretty much whenever he feels like it, which is about every five minutes.

5) Steve watched Aiden while the rest of went out to see the X-files movie. It got four thumbs down from us, but at this point I would go watch Ishtar II electric boogaloo if we have a free babysitter. (To give you some idea of what a treat this was for us, when the suggestion was raised we had to look up where a movie theater might be. We've lived here a year.)

Anyway, check out the pics below. As always you can click on the pictures to get to the full album. Also, I just want to give Julie's family a special thank you for all of their help both in setting up for the party and batting my hand away every time I tried to reach for my wallet. Also, another special thanks goes to Uncle Bob for the lovely ceremony. We wish more of you could have been with us, but since Julie got a camcorder from her very thoughtful husband for her birthday, we can share the video with you next time we see you.