Sunday, September 17, 2006

The Birthday Chronicles

I know that many of you wish you could have been present on the momentous occasion of Max's first birthday. I have therefore tried to summarize the day for you, so that you can feel that you were present.

After awakening at 5:45 am (a new earliness record for Max and hopefully attributable to excitement about the big day and not the beginning of a trend), Max enjoyed a hearty birthday breakfast of oatmeal and peaches. You can see by his sly eyes that he is still reflecting on the humor of waking me up before sunrise. If you could see my eyes, they would be reflecting on the same thing, only less humorously.

After breakfast, Max got the stains out of his birthday suit. I got revenge for the early hour by taking and later posting yet another shot of Max's naked booty for the blog. I don't know why the bathtub has a bar across one wall, or who put it there, but Max would like to shake the hand of whoever it was. Most of his time in the bath is now spent trying to do chin-ups.

After the necessities were taken care of, Max had some time to reflect on his one-ness and to play with some of his many presents (grandparents are great, aren't they?) Max likes this car, which he got to open early (because Granny and Gramps couldn't wait), but he can only get it to go backwards. Like his mother, he seems to have some driving issues.

In the afternoon, we went over to Max's Tillman grandparents' where we had a wild party for the boy in question. Max refused an afternoon nap before the party (again, hopefully excitement-related and not a new pattern), and therefore became progressively tireder and more wiggly as the afternoon wore on.

Of course, even when tired and over-partied, Max always takes the time to charm the ladies!

Max and Julia (his girlfriend) have brought a sort of a Wuthering Heights-ish flavor to their relationship of late ... which is to say, they are drawn irresistibly to one another, but do not always get along. They played together quite well for most of the party (here they are conspiring to pick and eat dirt out the planter and then go swim in the algae-infested fish pond), and only came to blows at the very end, when present time caused a brief but violent rift between them.

You can see here the first tell-tale signs of tiredness in Max, as his eyelids have begun to visibly droop.

He ate an enthusiastic birthday dinner, comprised of various bite-sized items. He got to try peanut-butter and jelly for the first time, and declared it fit for the gods. Even with these culinary delights at hand, however, you can see that they eye-drooping has gotten noticeably lower and more pronounced. I was convinced that he was going to fall asleep face-down in his food, but he heard that there was going to be cake and forced himself to stay awake for it.

It was worth staying awake for!

Max has recently begun clapping his hands, and throughout the 'Happy Birthday' song, he applauded his own longevity with great and unselfconscious glee.

Despite increasingly alarming levels of exhaustion, Max polished off an entire slice of cake by himself, allowing surprisingly few crumbs to escape onto the lap or down the shirt. If you asked Max, and if he could answer in English, he would probably tell you that this was his favorite part of the day. The rest of the party had its moments, but let's be honest. A one-year-old birthday party is more about photo opportunities than it is about the desires of the one-year-old in question. Cake, however, holds an ageless appeal.

4 comments:

stina said...

Happy Birthday, MAx! THat last photo great. And really, you don't need to have your eyes open to continue to shovel in the cake, do you?

Jabbertrack said...

that was good times, and tell grandpa tillman thanks for the party

Raging Wombat said...

Max was so exhausted by the end. But he took it all with an inspiring stoicism.

You are too kind, though. It was purely Julia that instigated the rift between her and her paramour. Much like Genna enjoys poking eyes, Julia likes to pull hair. That tuft of Max's got quite the yank, sadly.

We have begun intensive shock therapy to remove any desire to pull hair from Julia. I am happy to report that after only 3 treatments, she is horrified at the mere sight of hair, hers included. We avoid all mirrors.

Chelsa said...

If you teach Kate to work the midsection, you will have a formiddable team of assassins on your hands.