Hank's 1st Birthday

Baby Tank turned 12 months old last Thursday, can you believe it?!  My BABY is almost a toddler.  Since we are hours away from friends and family, we put off the celebration until Saturday afternoon when Blake's mom could be here.  And then it was ON.  Until it wasn't.  

Hippy cake

We've been trying to keep Hank on organic-y type foods ever since we introduced solids...nothing crazy, I'm not going out and milking my own cows or anything.  Our general rule is that we need to be able to pronounce all the ingredients in whatever he eats.  In that vein, I made him a whole wheat banana cake.  He. hated. it.  Truly screamed whenever he got some in his mouth and cried like the baby he is when I tried to force feed him.  Thank goodness for Lolly who made some good old yellow cake/chocolate iced cupcakes.  He pushed the hippy cake aside and got down and dirty with the cupcake.  For about 3 bites.  Seriously?!  Not sure if you can tell by the pics or not, but this kid likes to eat.  We were prepared for a level of destruction to the blankets and patio the likes of which have not been seen outside of Cupcake Wars.  And all he wanted to do was drink his milk and play with his toys.

Trying to force feed him cake.  Who's kid is this that doesn't like cake?!

What we didn't know is all the little spots we had noticed earlier that day and just wrote off as a little heat rash were in fact the beginnings of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease.  WHAT?!  We live in America, that sounds like some sort of third world cattle disease.  

Look close, you can see the spots!

Poor baby's throat hurt and we're forcing razorblade-like cake bits on him.  Parents of the year!

Turns out it's a pretty common illness in babies his age (though none of my friends' kids have ever had it or heard of it, pretty sure my dr.'s main m.o. is talking me off ledges).  The strand that he had originated in Huntsville, AL and was most likely passed to him through the diaper table at his MMO program.  Remind me why I take him to MMO?  A few hours of peace every week hardly seem worth it when your baby looks like this:

All in all, the bambino had a memorable birthday, complete with a month long celebration and a few left over spots as souvenirs.  Here we go on our way to the terrific twos!