My big boy is one!

Birthday morning, discovering the joys of wrapping paper

Loving his musical instruments (and no, they aren't too noisy!)

Rugged up for his first trip to the zoo

The build up to Milo turning one was quite a big deal for me actually. A few people said to me that his party would be celebrating making it through the first year. I just don't feel that way at all. For us it was a celebration of the best year of our lives. Milo has brought us so much sunshine and joy. I felt really emotional about he fact that my baby is approaching the stage where he is no longer a baby and will soon be toddling all around the place. In fact, he says "baby" a lot these days when he sees babies in person, on tv, in books... it's more like "baaaaay-beh!".

On the day of his birthday Clarence had the day off. Milo loved opening presents (or playing with the wrapping paper anyway), and his Musical Melody Mix has been a huge hit. It's in the photo above and it is a combination of lots of musical instruments. Most of the time Milo crawls around with one of his favourite toys in his hands, doing a form of a bum shuffle. He particularly likes to carry around the wooden sticks from his musical instruments or he has two little plastic drivers from vehicles he has.

We took him to the zoo on his actual birthday, despite the miserable cold weather and intermittent rain. He had a lovely time. He would look at the animals, look at us, then look back at the animals, clearly perplexed about how they got off the pages of his books and were big and real and right in front of him.

I also attempted to make him a fire truck cake from the Women's Weekly Kids' Cakes book... it was an EPIC FAIL. Milo was asleep and all was going well. I had made the cake successfully, made the icing and the roller doors, number plate and other parts of the decorations. Milo was having such a nice, long sleep that I thought I would go ahead and start decorating while I had the time as I still had plenty of other things to do for his party the next day. Well, I iced too soon and it all melted... the roller doors and windows started to sag and the red icing was staining them. I didn't prop it up enough on the cake board and when I put the oreo wheels on they came up way too high. I propped it up more but the icing melting just made it look worse... so instead of wasting it Clarence cut it up and froze pieces to take to work! And I made a different cake hahaha!! Disaster!

The day of the party Milo woke up with his first ever fever. He was miserable. He wanted to be held by me, Clarence, mum or dad the whole day. Poor kid. The party went well but he didn't crack many smiles! He has loved playing with his new toys since though I must say.

So where is my big one year old up to and what is he doing? He has been standing for months without holding onto anything. A bit over a week ago he took a step, then another half a step and according to my mum he took two full steps while I was at work on Thursday. He will start to do it then drop to the floor because he finds his bum shuffle/crawl much quicker. He says quite a few words and has started to just repeat words randomly when we say them to him, like a parrot. The words he says consistently are Dad, Mum, baby, woof, thank you (well it is similar to thank you), hi (more like haaaai when he sees a phone), hello, bye, duck, quack, row row row and clap. He has said love you to me a couple of times, LOVE THAT. He LOVES trains, planes, helicopters and trucks. Every time he hears a train he waves, even if he can't see it. He still loves his food, particularly avocado and vegemite sandwiches and he still loves salmon. He continues to love his music and swimming classes and flirts with ladies incessantly, waving at total strangers when we are out, then acting all smiley and coy. He is even getting a bit better when some men talk to him (he loves his dad and grandpa but isn't a huge fan of other men). He loves animals. He loves the Peekaboo Barn app on my phone and knows how to open the barn doors to see the next animal.

The cake, take 2!

All set up, loved the tissue pom poms, I am going to get some for Christmas dinner decorations!

The balloons are about the only thing that made him smile!

Cuddles with mummy

Cuddles with daddy

Hanging out with great aunty Wendy and his third cousin, Wolfie

Cuddles with grandma

Lolly bags

Milo really loves touching his hair which has finally started to grow. He touches his hair, our hair and grandma and grandpa's hair all the time. He loves watching ads too and will stop what he is doing to watch them. So maybe he will work in advertising specialising in hair products?! Who knows! He is bright, happy and beautiful and I love him to bits! What an incredible year it has been, I love being his mum.

So here is my epic fail first cake attempt... melting everywhere... I just want to clarify also that yes, I did use Kit Kats on the second cake. As you know I do not buy Nestle products as I hate that they use cocoa sourced from cocoa farms in Africa that use child labour, which I am passionately against. World Vision have published the Good Chocolate Guide to Australia and Kit Kat's are Nestle's only UTZ certified chocolate. Even though Kit Kat's are UTZ certified I do not like to support Nestle on the whole because I believe all their chocolate should be UTZ certified. I will not be making a habit of this, for me it was an exception, as were the Smarties, had I have had more time I would have sourced substitutes.