Sean's First Birthday

On Monday Sean turned one, and on Saturday we celebrated with friends and family. Grandpa John and Uncle Jeff made it down for the party, and of course Grandma Connors, Grandpa Boyd and Dianna, and Uncle John were there too. Sean had a great time playing with all of his friends, and was super excited about all the balloons mom got for him. And seeing him enjoy his first cake was priceless. Since pictures are worth 1,000 words, here is a photo essay of his first birthday:

The Birthday Boy with Uncle John and a Balloon

Playing with Friends

Sean loves Thea so much, I made him a Swissy cake for his birthday

Singing Happy Birthday -- Sean couldn't wait til we were done for his first bite of cake

First Bite of Cake

Sean decided that he likes chocolate cake

Sean enjoyed ripping up the paper as we opened gifts

Sean wasted no time finding someone to read him one of his new books

Sean couldn't wait to play with his new Busy Zoo play cube

The Loot: The amount of new toys Sean got was a little intimidating. We now have a new toy stoarge and organization system for it.

And He's Off!

Well, it's official -- Sean is crawling.

It's hard to say when he started crawling, as it's been a gradual process for him. A few months ago, he was getting around by rolling around the room. At some point, he started experimenting with an "army crawl." Then, he'd get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth a bit. A few weeks ago, he'd take one crawling "step" but then go back on his tummy and army crawl some more. Soon, that one step became two, which became four until suddenly, he was crawling everywhere.

Now, he's unstoppable. "Constant Motion" is how my aunt described him. "All over the place" is how I usually describe him. He's taking advantage of his new-found mobility to get into whatever he can. Looks like we got the baby gates up just in time!!

Rolling Over

It's about 5:15 am local time here in California, and Sean just rolled over for the first time! I'm keeping him on East Coast time while we're out here, which means his "7:30" feeding and morning play time actually start at 4:30! I just put him down for some tummy time, and the next thing I knew, he'd rolled himself onto his back! I think he startled himself a little when he did it because the look on his face said "What just happened?!?" But when I smiled back at him and told him he was a good boy and I was proud of him, he must have realized he did something good, because he then broke out in a HUGE grin!

While it might still be a little while before he's rolling over regularly (or knows what he's doing when he does it), it was still amazing to see!

Big Milestone!

Sean slept through the night last night! Needless to say, Mom and Dad are ecstatic! I guess the next few days will tell if this was a fluke (he was exhausted beyond belief from hardly napping Friday and Saturday) or the beginning of a trend (PLEASE let it be the beginning of a trend!!!).

He got his last night time feeding around 10:30, and at 5:30 I woke up to a puddle of milk and a still silent baby monitor. Being the excessively paranoid and worried mom that I am, I immediately ran downstairs to make sure he was still alive, because 7 hours of sleep seemed too much to hope for! But, he was sleeping away, as peaceful as ever. So I just went back to bed. At 7:30, I went down stairs to give him breakfast (my boobs felt like they were about to explode at this point), and he was still sleeping. But, I woke him up anyway.

We're working on getting him on a pretty rigid schedule so it will be less of a shock to him (and Bryan and I) when I return to work in a few weeks. So, from now on, there will be no futzing around with feeding times and nap times. Hopefully, by the time I'm heading back to work, we'll have all the kinks worked out of his schedule, and he'll be regularly sleeping through the night!