Whirlwind of a weekend

Nathaniel seemed to have a great time at his party Saturday ... he actually seemed to handle the whole thing far better than Amanda or I did.

Friday, my mother came in from Pittsburgh for the little guy's party. Unfortunately, her 7:30 p.m. arrival time via Southwest turned into a 10:30 p.m. arrival ... a little late for everyone involved. And my mother didn't get to see Nathaniel on his actual birthday.

Then came Saturday, the big party day. We got Nathaniel to take some extra nap time to help him deal with all the fuss coming later, and it worked out pretty well. We also gave him a bigger snack in the early afternoon so he might not be so fussy around 5 p.m., when we planned on unveiling his little cake for him.

It all worked like a charm. Nathaniel was in a great mood for most of the day and my mother and sister-in-law both helped in many ways to get the food ready for the party.

But somehow, Amanda and I were both completely beat on Sunday and Monday. Nathaniel is doing great, but we had 36-48 hours of exhaustion from the whole thing ... the number of people, the amount of work to get it all set up and the party running a little longer than we expected.

But this is really about Nathaniel, not us, right? Nathaniel seemed to love the whole thing. He got gifts, and he got to really smash a cake without mom or dad stopping him. He really enjoyed smacking his 8-inch chocolate cake, clapping his frosting-covered hands and wiping everything on his face. We gave him a quick taste of frosting, and he made a terrible face at us. Looks like that will have to wait (which is fine with us).

His only difficult moment was when his 2 1/2-year-old cousin blew a party favor in his face (one of those rolled up things that sticks out about a foot when you blow into it). It smacked him in the face, and he fell down crying. This spurred his cousin to cry also, very sorry that she caused Nathaniel to cry. But that all ended within a few minutes with both stopping the crying and making up ... all very nice.

After the party wound down, it was time for Nathaniel's final bottle and then off to sleep. We were definitely worried about this because he tends to have a difficult time falling asleep after getting wound up by a bunch of people being around ... surprisingly, though, he downed a bottle and crashed immediately. Amanda followed him into sleep within 30 minutes, and I only managed to stay up another hour or so after that.

We've already decided we probably won't be doing a big thing like this again anytime soon ... but we're glad this one worked out.

I'll post some photos next time around.