Cake, Presents, and His First Airplane Ride

Some pics of Tyler's birthday celebration yesterday.....

Here's after he "blew out" his candle - and by "blew out" I mean that he swiped at the candle with his hand and extinguished it with his finger before I could get a picture of it. This lovely cake was made by big brothers Owen and AJ, with a little help from mama and daddy. Egg shell fragments courtesy of AJ.

He wasn't to sure about this large plate of high fructose corn syrup and refined sugars and sprinkles we set before him....

He felt it would be safest to test the consistency first with his fingers....

Hmmm....interesting.

Better smear it around the mouth and hands first to check it out....Yell a few times too, just to make sure it isn't still alive.

Smash it a few times to get it good and flattened....

THEN it can be eaten.
Yum!

On to the presents...with a LITTLE help from big brothers.

Lemme just tell you, that Tyler has no toys. I'm not kidding. He has a small hodge-podge basket about the size of a large shoe box of baby rattles, book, and random toys in his room. I diligently bought him a new toy now and again when he was about 4, 5, 6 months old - after he started sitting and was interested in toys, but I swear to you: the kid didn't like toys. He was much happier to smash his hands in the dog food and push a stack of post-it notes around the floor. An empty water bottle with some coins in it?? WAY more entertaining than that $15 toy you just bought him.
So we quit buying him toys.
And we were hesitant to get him anything for his birthday even....terrible right? But we pored over the toy aisle at the store and thought that maybe, just maybe...he might like this:

And he did. And he actually played with it for about 20 minutes.
Success!
Now if we could just get AJ and Owen to leave it alone and let him play with it.....

This cool musical clock and old-skool phone are from Lisa. She was pretty geeked to find this Fisher Price clock at the store that was identical to the one she had growing up. And she also found this phone which I think every American kid born in the 60's, 70's, or early 80's had. Come on?! The Fisher Price phone...with the googly eyes? Tell me you had one. It looks exactly the same...except the cord is shorter because it's a choking hazard. It's a wonder we didn't all strangle ourselves on those long cords, right?

Anyway...I broke out those toys this morning, since O and AJ had stolen away his ball popper from yesterday and were hoarding it in his room. He enjoyed them.
Vintage coloring for vintage toys....
:)

I think he looks like this because he hears the boys coming to take away his stuff.
Oh no they di-n't.

Here's one with his new luvy teddy bear that AJ picked out. It's super soft and squeezy and I'm hoping that this little bear quickly starts to take the place of my boobs as a source of comfort and security.
(*fingers crossed*)

And just some randoms from his room this a.m. as he attacked me and tried to swat the camera out of my hands.

Totally blew this one out, but I like it anyway...

In other news...Tyler and I are flying to Michigan tomorrow to visit my family and await the arrival of my new niece, who better not come anytime tomorrow because Rob will be in Detroit picking me up from the airport and indisposed for several hours.
I'm more than a little nervous about flying with Tyler on my lap. I've flown with the boys TONS of times before, and lots of times I've even flown with both of them by myself when they were 1 and 2 years old...but I've never flown with a baby at THIS AGE. This wiggly, squiggly, loud, and demanding age. He is BUSY.
I'm anticipating a LONG 2 hour flight.
And I'm crossing my fingers that there will be an empty seat on the plane that I can buckle his car seat into and strap him down for the duration of the trip.

Less frequent blogging to come, but I WILL try to update from Michigan when I can. Be back in about 2 weeks or so.

Have a great weekend!