Hadden's Birthday Redux

Hi all,

Well, we finally got around to actually throwing Hadden a birthday PARTY. A month late. Oh well, I suppose he looks at it as a bonus birthday. The sad part is going to be breaking the news to him in July when there is no party (Clara's party will be in June - she's 11 months old today!). It's only been a month since the last blog (can you tell I got tenure this year - I'm blogging all the time now...) but things have happened - some even worth reporting/recording:

• Clara: crawls all over the house now. The cat food is in constant peril of being eaten by an 11-month old.
• Clara: Can sort of try and kind of say a few words. She honestly tries to get "ball", "uh-oh" and a few others out if you drill them into her head.
• Hadden: ADORES my softball bat. Taking it out on Sundays is a near-ritual.
• Hadden: peeing on the poddy. Doesn't really have accidents any more. Now, if only he was okay with using the adult poddy too...

Hadden's Birthday Party

We had a party for Hadden on Saturday, May 15th from 4-6pm. To compound the fun, Harvey and Dexter (4-year old twins two doors down) had a party at Pump It Up (http://www.pumpitupparty.com/) in the morning from 9:45-12 noon that Hadden was invited too. He was totally pumped for this party and ran his tail off there. Eat pizza, cake, juice and whoop it up with friends, then home for a nap. Now Hadden's party (he's a busy guy). We had several friends over plus parents plus siblings so it turned out to be about 20 or so people - my parents were also in town so it worked out great. We had two kinds of macaroni and cheese (made from scratch using a couple of Painted Table recipes), a zucchini chocolate whole wheat cake, watermelon, garlic bread, a vegetable platter (Hadden actually had a lot of carrots), apple juice...and for the adults we had raspberry rum shrub and mai tai cocktails. Then we went to the park down the street since the weather was great (70F and sunny). We had lots of bubble-making stuff but the high point was a pinata that Angela brought over. Everyone got a good swing at it and when it burst it was candy mayhem. I think Hadden had two lollipops at once.

Hadden at Carkeek Park with his "shark tooth" necklace from Grandma and Grandpa

Ready to swing at the pinata

Taking a swing at the pinata

Loot afterwards

Clara celebrates afterwards with a balloon

Well, that's it for May. Steve heads off to Lisbon, Portugal next week for a conference so we shall see how it all goes - the volcano in Iceland (Eyjafjallajökull if you must know) is still spewing ash and Heathrow was shut down today (I fly through Heathrow). We shall see how things go...

TTFN,

Steve