She's Ready to Pop Baby Shower

We did a baby shower for one of the girls Laura Belk, back in October.  Melissa and I hosted the shower at my apartment, and Penny provided the theme, "She's Ready to Pop."  We wanted to incorporate the idea of a Girl's Night Out, so that we could get together and relax.  I got inspiration from here and here.  I liked the colors of blues and greens since she was having a boy, and I even used the same invitations.

We had a delicious Popcorn Bar!

We used the idea of air-popped, with butter topping, and a variety of seasonings.

Some of the different popcorn toppings

We had a few premade sweet popcorns to accompany to savory toppings:

Peanut Butter

Vanilla Almond Caramel

Caramel Corn

Chocolate Corn 

 Penny made some Cake Pops that were delicious

 We also had a variety of toppings to add to the popcorn: 

Reese's Pieces, Peanuts, M&Ms, Candy Corn and Raisins.

 We also had a drink station, that included a beverage dispenser with water,

and a variety of soda.

We had each guest bring a decorated onesie to the party, along with a gift.  Then we made a game of having Laura guess which onesie corresponded to each guest.

My friend Nancy was in charge of the games, and they were a lot of fun.  We guessed how many candies were in a jar, as well as played the string game where we cut off a string the length that we thought was the circumference of Laura's belly.  The game that was perhaps the most fun was when we played Hot Potato with a diaper wrapped full of Whoppers.  We had so much fun the diaper became unwrapped during the process, and I found several Whoppers a few days later.

Dancing Remy

Last night, we had a baby shower at my apartment.  And after Remy's bath, he wanted to join the fun.  I started laughing so hard, I almost cried.

When I showed this video to Ben, he was like, "He's barely dancing.  Now that baby dancing to Beyonce, she can dance!"  Apparently Remy doesn't watch enough music videos.

Loves

Just chillin' watching Sesame Street.

I yam what I yam... and I yam one!

This Saturday was Remy's birthday party, and we had a fun time!  It was my first time putting together an actual party, and it turned out really well.  I think the party was more for Ben and me as parents; a celebration of our first year of successful parenting.  

I decided to do a sailor theme, thanks to my friend Rachele.  I received inspiration here and here.  I also used some free printables from here for the cupcake toppers and Remy's birthday sign, which I failed to take a picture of.  I didn't like the shapes on the cupcake toppers, so I used the blank ones and downloaded a free font that went better with the theme. The colors turned out a lot darker when I printed them out on cardstock, but I thought they were still pretty cute.

I decided that it would be cute to have Remy wear a sailor shirt, but I didn't want to make anything too time consuming.  I normally wouldn't have Remy wear a themed outfit for his birthday party, but with October just around the corner, I decided it could double as his Halloween costume.  I planned everything out in my head using two t-shirts to put together a sailor top.  The only problem was that I couldn't find plain t-shirts in the right size.  I adapted my plan, and used two onesies instead.  And I have to say, it turned out much better than I had imagined.  Maybe I'll put together a tutorial because it was super easy.

 Front

Back

For Remy's smash cake, I decided to make a round cake and put a sailboat on top.  It was super easy, and only required a bamboo skewer and paper.  It was my kind of cake, because it was inexpensive.  

For party favors, I decided to make sailboat cookies.  I love the way decorated cookies and cakes look and I've been wanting to try my hand at it for a while, so it was my chance to splurge on a pastry bag and tip set.  My friend Penny helped me decorate the cookies, and she is my craft mentor because she is so talented.  I decided to package them in some inexpensive bags I bought from Walmart.  I shredded some blue paper I already had in our shredder and put it in the bottom of the bags like confetti.

For food, we just made up some sandwiches using rolls from Costco.  We also bought some lunch-size bags of chips and grapes, and we were set.  My friend Nancy helped me with the food prep.

We ate outside and had a great time with our party guests.  It turns out that outside is the best place to eat a smash cake.

I was even able to get Remy to eat a sandwich before it was cake-eating time.

And then we gave Remy his cake:

My favorite part in the video is when Remy tries to fling the frosting off his hands, but it's stuck.  I'm no sure why the color in the video is so blue.  It seems almost all videos from our camera end up that way, but we were able to take some cute pictures of Remy that turned out better.

 Remy is experiencing the sugar high

Yum yum!

 All done Mom!

UPDATE:  The title of the post comes from Popeye.  Popeye is a sailor man, hence the connection to our sailor-themed birthday party.

Remy's Progress Report

Can you believe Remy has turned one?  It's a little hard for us to take it in because it means our little boy is growing up.  See next post for birthday pictures.

Remy has been doing all sorts of fun things now.  He is walking now, but has not yet decided that it's his primary mode of transportation.  He is, however, getting much more confident  in his walking abilities.  He will even walk short distances by himself around the house.  We love playing outside where Remy can practice walking around and playing with other neighborhood children.  And he recently learned how to go down the slide by himself.

Sorry about the low-grade quality. 

Remy has also been great about eating adult food now.  We share our dinner with him, and for the most part he will eat it just fine.  He's had chocolate now, thanks to his birthday smash cake.  We are working on adding cow's milk to his diet now.

Remy is still a social creature.  He loves attention from everyone and plays coy.  This means that when someone says hi and smiles at him, he smiles back shyly, leaning his head to the side and putting it on Mom.  It's so adorable!  He is increasing his vocabulary and loves saying "oh" or "woh."  He has also learned how to cluck his tongue, which is pretty funny.  He also kind of hums and sings to himself when he's playing with his toys.

Remy has also started teething again.  This means that he is must more irritable lately, and now has little temper tantrums or meltdowns when he doesn't like something.  It's cute for about two seconds but that's it.  His legs go limp and he throws his head and body back, which has led to some bonks and bruises at our house.  He also has learned how to scream, which I wish he would unlearn.  Ah well, the good comes with the bad, right?

We still can't believe how big and strong he's getting!

Remy is Walking!

Remy has been walking for a couple weeks now.  We figured it was about time to upload a video so everyone could see.

11 months!

I realize I forgot to post Remy's progress at 10 months.  We were out of town and I didn't have my camera cord to upload the pictures, so I completely spaced it.  Then when I thought about it again, I realized he was just closer to 11 months anyway, so we'll just do this one at 11 months.

Remy has been growing growing growing, and not around the middle either.  He is getting longer, but is the same string bean baby.  He loves to eat, but you wouldn't be able to tell because he is such an active little guy. His top front teeth have come in, and we love his toothy grin.  He wants to be moving all the time and is no longer content to sit on your lap or even stay in one place..  In fact, his newest trick is grabbing your hands when he's sitting on your lap, sliding down to the floor, and taking off because he fully expects you to take him walking wherever he wants to go.

I can't call him my Rolly-Polly baby anymore because he has learned to crawl!  At first, he would crawl very timidly and then resort back to rolling to get around, but crawling is now his preferred method of transportation.  He learned how to push himself up to a sitting position to pull himself up on furniture and bookshelves.  This of course means that the first 15 minutes of nap time are spent cleaning up after the little guy.  One of his favorite games is to pull everything out of the diaper bag or my purse, going through each item one by one.  And of course, once it's all on the ground it is no longer interesting and Remy moves on to something else.  Remy also "walks" around the room, supporting himself with the couch or anything else he can get his hands on. He can actually move around pretty good, and he's such a tough guy; with all the spills and tumbles he takes, we don't hear much crying from him.

Remy is definitely getting more social.  He loves people and the attention that he receives from people, but often plays coy when someone says hi to him by smiling and hiding his face.  He loves to mimic us, and has learned how to blow out his mouth (which sometimes makes him look like he's doing the Zoolander pose), sniff through his nose, stick out his tongue, blow out his mouth, and put his hands in the air when you do.  His favorite word is "da-da"  and he says "mmmmmmmm"  a lot, but we don't hear a lot of "ma-ma" around the house.  He loves going outside, but he has to be carefully monitored because he likes putting anything and everything in his mouth.  His pacifier is no longer the deterrent it was before, and he doesn't like you fishing anything out of his mouth that he may have put there.

When he gets excited he starts laughing and flaps his little hands and arms like he's a little bird.  We just love him and think it is so fun to watch him grow up.  We're having fun planning his birthday next month.