Party and cake round 1

We made a ball pit out of balloons. Kiki blew all the balloons up! They were a huge hit across the board.

Also a picture of him eating cake. He seemed to like it.

Birthday cake!

We bought one a straw berry short cake cake for everyone to eat. The second cake I made for Simon to eat on his own, I put a layer of bananas in the middle.

Birthday Breakfast

Birthday breakfast with Grandma Kiki, Grandpa Bart, Auntie Colleen, and Jenn for the birthday boy! He even had his first meal ordered just for him and he ate almost all of it,

Night staining deserves a quiet night

I don't think we've put up a post that's not about Simon since construction on the house finished and we moved in last fall.  So to break up the baby monotony (I know you're all getting tired of it) I'll write about the house project I did yesterday.

When wood on the back porch/steps was put in at the end of October, it was too cold for Larry to coat it with anything.  That was fine all winter, but now that it's been getting direct sunlight for a few months the wood has faded from dark brown to light gray and was starting to warp and crack.  So it was time to put something on there to protect the wood.

Contractor Larry recommended Penofin oil finish to seal the deck rather than staining it.  The porch is made of some type of fancy rainforest wood (I can't remember the name of it at the moment) that looks really good on its own, so regular stain would just cover a lot of that up.  Penofin wasn't widely available in our area, but we found a store up in Evanston that would special order it for us.  We ordered one with a slight chestnut tint to it to help restore the color to the wood.  It was delivered earlier this week, so I took the afternoon off from work yesterday to get this done in time for Simon's birthday weekend.

More pics and details after the jump...

Picture of the Day: 6/14/12

After breakfast Simon goes back to the high chair and checks to see if he dropped anything in his chair. Today he found some lost Cheerios. Don't worry, he cleaned them up.

Picture of the Day: 6/13/12

At Toys R Us playing with all the toys! We didn't let him see the one we were buying for his birthday. 

First Swimming Lesson

Simon and I had a great time at his first swimming lesson yesterday.  It was a beautiful day out and he just woke up from an almost 2 hour nap so he was in an especially good mood for the walk down there.  The Y just completed a big renovation a few weeks ago and it's really clean and nice in there.  After dropping our stuff off in the family locker room, we joined the other parents (6 moms and 1 other dad) and the kids at the side of the pool.

I was expecting a little more instruction for me on how to introduce Simon to the water or some pool safety tips for babies, but it doesn't seem like that's really what this class is all about.  The instructor just told us to all just get into the pool, so I held Simon and we walked down the steps into the shallow end.  He didn't seem surprised at the amount of water or that I was in there with him... he just kept leaning over to splash just like he does in bathtime.   When everyone was in the water, all of us stood in a big circle to start the class.

More details (but sadly, no pictures) after the jump...