Well, it happened. This handsome baby boy of mine turned ONE this week!

Honestly, it was a little bittersweet! With our first I was always looking forward to the next milestone — in part probably because her newborn phase was really, really hard. But with our sweet Jojo every moment (well, almost) has been so delightful and he’s been such an easy baby that I just don’t want to let go of these moments! We’ve started night-weaning (yeah… I’m a sucker on that and have a track record of letting these kiddos have their nursing as long as they want… how can I refuse them?! But I am so ready to get more sleep at night!) and surprisingly that hasn’t been too emotional, but him growing up and turning a whole year old on me? Not OK!

But we do love to look back on the beautiful times — and the challenges, too. I’m grateful our boy has such a sweet disposition because he’s been through a lot with clubfoot already. He needed to be a zen baby because he’s had other challenges in life. Bless him and the sweet spirit he brought into our home ❤

I know, I can be a little overly sentimental. I just can’t help it!

Anyway, his actual birthday went well: I knew this time around to have zero expectations ha ha! Plus we were snowed in (gotta love beautiful, wild Wyoming!) so we took it easy. Adelina helped me pick out a special snack to share with brother (goldfish, obviously — and he LOVED them) and cake “design” and a special candle. We had two balloons (because this whole someone-else-is-getting-attention thing was hard on our toddler…) ready in the morning and those provided plenty of fun, then during Jonas’ first nap Adelina helped me make his cake!

When Andrew came home that evening we had a perfect wintry day dinner (soup + grilled cheese + salad) and poor Adelina was way too excited about opening the presents she had helped me wrap so we let her help. There were some tears about the presents being for someone else than herself… but we got through it, poor thing! That is definitely a challenge, I know she’s at a “selfish age” but teaching her unselfishness is a new challenge entirely, and it feels daunting!

Anyway. Cake time!

Jonas eyed the candle with a great deal of curiosity… touched the cake — it was too hard for him to really grab at it so we decided to cut it up… and then… he dug right in!

And this time around, our kid was definitely interested in his cake!

Happy Birthday sweet Jonas!