Birthday Boy

We spent the whole weekend celebrating Finn. On Friday we had some friends over to eat some cupcakes. Marc snapped some cute pictures of the birthday boy before his friends got here.

  

  

These cute girls were so excited to celebrate Finn. Anywhere we went last week they would tell people about his birthday.

These boys are going to be best friends, whether they like it or not. It's fun to watch them try to interact with each other. 

First cupcake!

 I was a bit worried he would be traumatized from getting sung to by all those people, but it didn't seem to bother him.

Sorry for all the pictures, but you know we had to document every single bite! He ate half the paper from his first cupcake before he realized it was all gone. 

  

  

   

Clean up is no fun...

On his actual birthday we started out with the traditional first birthday pancake breakfast. 

Ha! I guess his first strawberry was a sour one, these pictures made me laugh. I guess he recovered okay though, since those were the only things on his plate that he ate.

 

Nora wanted to pour her own syrup. Only about half of it made it on to her pancakes before she tried drinking it straight up.

Finn got his first taste of bacon, too. He was definitely a fan of the flavor, but he didn't have quite enough teeth to eat it all up.

We had to do a little birthday photo shoot when we got home. Finn loves this bouncy horse, he will just go stand by it and say  "mama, mama, mama, mama" until I help him up there to ride.

And of course the sisters wanted to jump in as well. They love him so much.

While Finn napped these two decorated his cake. I wrote his name but they did the rest.

Surprise! He loved this cake as well.

When he saw the rest of us using forks he squawked at us until he got one, too.

  

And of course it's not a birthday without presents! He was mildly interested in the wrapping paper. Luckily T and Nora were more than willing to help him out.

 

Happy First Birthday Finn! 

A Year With Finn

My baby boy turns one today. Let's review the time since September 13, 2013, shall we? It went by in a flash.

Brand new boy!

These girls were thrilled to get him home.

Three weeks old. 

Two months.

Four months.

Five!

Six.

Sweet seven month old.

Eight months.

Nine!

Ten.

Eleven

And today!

Finn is such a delightful baby. He just makes us all so happy.

Some things about Finn:

His nicknames include: Finners, Finnegan, the Foof, Mr. Fefferman, Foofers, McFloof, Finnamon, Sfinn (like Sven), Mr. Sir, etc. Our poor kids rarely get called by their actual names.

He hates baths. So much. So, so much.

He loooooves to nurse. He is a total Mama's boy. Those things are probably related. Currently he likes to nurse with his legs and torso dangling off the chair or the side of the bed. Not my favourite, but when I shift him back to having his whole body on the chair he just wriggles around until he's dangling again.

He does love his Daddy bunches too, though, and those big sisters. They can get him giggling like no one else. Few things make me happier than seeing the three of them giggling and playing together. And lately the girls are pretty much the only ones to consistently get kisses from him. And Marc usually has about ten seconds to pick him up once he walks in the door from work or he will hear about it from Finn.

Finn works so hard to master new things. He's working on climbing up on the couch and it's fun to see him staring down at his legs, concentrating on getting them to do what he wants. He did the same when he was learning how to stand on his own, and when he was learning how to walk. He's been quite deliberate about most of his milestones.

He's hit or miss about eating "real" food. Some days he loves to eat anything and surprises us by just how much he can pack in, and other days he turns his nose up at everything we offer him. Some favorites include pasta, avocado, broccoli, tomatoes, cottage cheese, any sort of meat, and of course, his beloved Costco animal crackers.

He loves to play peek-a-boo and patty cake. He can't help but try to dance or clap along if he hears music.

Finn still is very stand off-ish to strangers, or basically anyone but us and a few friends that have been around long enough to earn his trust. If someone dares talk to him when he is crawling or walking around he will just flatten himself to the ground until they move on. And if, heaven forbid, he gets held by someone he doesn't know he will just stare at the ground and refuse to acknowledge them until they put him down. He did spontaneously wave at a stranger for the first time ever when we were grocery shopping the other day, so maybe he is making some progress.

He loves, loves, loves to play with cars. It's kind of surprised me how early he started seeking them out over the plethora of his sister's "girly" toys. He can most often be found rolling a car back and forth on the ground.

That being said, when we are in the basement he often makes a beeline for the dollhouse full of princesses.

Finn likes to play catch. It is the cutest thing to play with him. If you roll him a ball he will grab it and roll it back to you, or sometimes he will just pick it up and bring it over to place in your hands. The girls love to try to play it with him, but it usually gets out of hand pretty fast.

He makes the cutest scrunchy-nose face when he smiles, sometimes. I love it. Sometimes he makes the same scrunchy-nose when he's not smiling, and it just gives him this look of utter disdain.

He says no, mama, and dada, and is very chatty recently with all his other baby sounds. When he wants to nurse he will climb into my lap, pat me on the chest and say "ba ba!".

He haaaaates loud noises. Can. not. stand. the vacuum cleaner, poor babe. If I have to use it when Marc is not home he just sits a safe distance off and cries until it's over. Luckily for him we just have the one rug that ever needs vacuuming, so it doesn't happen too often.

We love this boy so much and are so grateful every day that we get to have him in our family.

Teresa's Birthday Interview

Finally we were able to get T's birthday interview off our memory card. Poor thing is all worn out from almost six years of vigorous use! The memory card, not Teresa, even though she tells pretty much any one that asks her age that she is "almost six!". I keep telling her that, no, actually, she's just barely five but she says things like "well...I'm just going to tell people I'm almost six".

Ooooh, man, now that I'm reviewing all the videos I'm totally remembering how super annoyed I was by the time we finally got a full interview done. Some certain little siblings were making things pretty difficult, and then of course every time we started over T was a little less interested. We actually ended up trying two days in a row.

Here's a short clip from her actual birthday, Marc setting up the camera before the craziness started.



Aaaaaand finally, here's the official interview.



Sigh. I'm so sad seeing all that gorgeous hair that she convinced me to chop off.

I don't usually transcribe them, but she's so quiet on some of the answers this year. (And, wow, I'm so obnoxiously loud on some of the questions!)

Favorite color - red
Favorite toy - Snow White doll
Fruit - grapes
TV Show - Woody the Woodpecker
Fav thing to eat for lunch - mac and cheese
Favorite thing to wear - dresses
Game - Candyland
Fav snack - fig bars
Animal - kitty cats, because they're so cute
Favorite song - Let It Go (surprise!)
Book - her new Rarity book she got for her birthday
Best friend - stuffed kitty, human best friend - Mina
Fave Cereal - Flakes
Thing to do outside - play with Rose
Thing she takes to bed - the a fore mentioned stuffed kitty
Favorite drink - juice
Breakfast - tortillas (?)
And she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up. Guess we need to sign that girl up for some ballet lessons.

And we also did a little photo shoot of Finners wearing this adorable little suit that used to be worn by his Daddy. Seriously, this little boy. He's just the cutest thing. I really feel like people should be more appreciative of how much I restrain myself from just constantly gushing about how fabulous I think he is. Anyway, there are a lot of them, because I just think he's so cute!

Poor little dude took some concrete to the face on Saturday, so that's the scrape you see on his eye. He has successfully navigated the step down from our house to the porch more times than I can count so OF COURSE the one time I decide he doesn't need me to supervise him he biffs it.

  

Seriously, baby model material right here.

And here are some pictures of Nora, because we love her too. She's a cutie pie. 

Summer Catch Up

I feel like all I ever post about on here is Finn! The rest of us have been doing stuff, too. I went to Nashville with my Mom and sisters earlier this summer. It was so fun to be able to hang out with them! I took Finn, of course, and actually did not take many pictures! Here are a few from my phone. I know the others took more and better ones!

We visited Andrew Jackson's home, the Hermitage, went to a show at the Grand Ol' Opry, and toured downtown Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was so much fun! Well, Finn HATED the Opry, poor dude, I got to sit out in the foyer with him for a bit of it, but other than that we had a blast.

Nora is in a very fancy stage lately. She mostly likes to wear dresses or skirts and always a pair of shoes. She is quite particular about which shoes she wants to wear with which outfit. She was quite pleased with her get up here and wanted some pictures taken. T had to photobomb them, of course :).

Teresa made a to do list for Marc one day while he was at work. It says "play with Finn and kiss Mom. Build! Beds! eat play go to bed". Marc told them when we moved to the new house he would build them some bunk beds, so that's what she means by Build! Beds!.

I think I'm addicted to taking selfies with Finn.

The girls helped me put together some little shelves from Ikea. They did a great job! I was surprised by how much they were able to do on their own. They did all the screws themselves, until they got too hard to twist, and then I finished them up. T tightened the very last screw all the way down by herself. She was so pleased that she was finally able to do one all by herself, even when it got difficult. It was a good lesson in patience for Mom, too.

  

My poor baby Finn got hand, foot, and mouth disease :(. He had a fever for a few days, but I just assumed it was teething. Then a day or so later it looked like his eczema was flaring up, since it is worst on his legs and ankles, but then they turned into these big sores and showed up on his hands too, poor babe. I don't think it was too bad in his mouth, thankfully, but he would not let me get much of a look in there. He was pretty sicky and miserable for a few days there, though.

 And it's been awhile since we've done a things they say post! I've gotten really bad at writing down the cute/funny things the girls say, so I don't have too many, but here they are:

When I pulled out Nora's birthday shirt that said "3", T said "for my birthday, I'm gonna need a shirt that says 'almost 6'".

Marc chided Nora for making a big mess with her food and she said "I'm sorry Dad, I didn't realize that was inappropriate".  We had to laugh at how old and mature she sounded.

Finn broke a piece of something he shouldn't have been chewing on and I just lightly said "Finn, you stinker!" and Nora responded "Mom! He is NOT a stinker! He is a kind and generous boy!"

Marc set the hose up to run water down the slide for the girls a few weeks ago. T asked him if he had done that when he was a little boy. He said no, and she said "Oh, because they didn't have hoses when you were a kid?".

Nora still has a few words that she doesn't say correctly, and it makes us smile. She calls cottage cheese "college cheese" and roast beef "gross beef".

Oh, and here are some videos of Finn. He woke up about 10:00 one night and was just wide awake, so I brought him downstairs to hang out. Here he is watching himself on the camera.

And trying to replicate some noises we were making:

Well, shoot, this post ended up being pretty Finn heavy, too! Maybe next time.