First Birthday

The time has come for Baby Bear to receive his new nickname. A new Baby Bear will be making his/her appearance sometime in April or May. So, we will refer to Baby Bear as Gummy Bear now.

We celebrated Gummy's first birthday in September. It was a very low-key get-together with his sisters and his parents. (I'm not into big bashes for 1-year-olds. They're just too young to appreciate it or enjoy it.) We went to McDonald's for his birthday dinner. He giggled most of the time and said "Da-da-da-da-da" while gesturing towards Papa Bear (not an official word, but it made Papa feel happy, nonetheless). He even held a french fry for awhile. He doesn't put things in his mouth, so we were pretty safe giving it to him to play with.

We headed home after that. Gummy got to open his presents with lots of help from his sisters. Cinnamon quickly commandeered some of his toys. (A few days later she ripped apart a nerf-style football she supposedly picked out for him.)

After that, we had cake! I made a cupcake platter for his birthday cake. Again, he didn't actually eat the cake, but he had lots of fun digging his fingers into it and getting totally messy, which is what 1-year-olds do at their birthday parties! I also fed him some vanilla ice cream. He was in heaven!

That was it for the birthday boy!

(For those of you who don't know, Gummy has some special challenges. He has a very small pituitary gland, which is causing problems with low thyroid and growth hormone levels. He is currently receiving thyroid medication and growth hormone injections. The doctor told us he would probably be on the growth hormones the rest of his childhood. It's a daily injection that I give him. He's become very good at not crying (very much) when he gets his growth hormone injections. He has developmental delays across the board and gets occupational, physical, and speech therapy. He eats pureed/jarred baby foods and drinks pediasure from a bottle. He has also been tested for Fragile X syndrome, but everything came back normal. Yay! He stopped growing at about 5 or 6 months, so he's been in 3-6 month clothes, but now I'm moving him to 6-9 month clothes. Whoo-hoo!)