Week 50: Baby's First Birthday Party

Welcome to the first year dad podcast. My name is TJ Lacey, I have just recently become a dad and on this podcast I am sharing my journey each week during my first year of the dad life. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode. Hello, hello and welcome to the first year dad podcast. This is TJ and this was a big weekend because I officially have a one year old child. This past week was Liam's first birthday. This is the 50th episode of the podcast series. And on this episode we're going to do a recap of Liam's first birthday activities and then we've just got two more remaining after that. Christina is going to join me for episode 51 and then we'll have one final show episode 52 just kind of recapping the first year as a dad, the podcast as a whole and putting a bow on everything as we move on to the next adventure. So that's what we've got on tap for these final three episodes and starting with today. We're going to be talking first birthdays. We had a two part birthday celebration for baby Liam. His actual birthday was on Thursday, February 27th. So yeah, on that day we kicked off the morning by just the three of us giving him presents. We each got very appropriate gifts, I would say. Christina got him a little toy food type of thing. So it had like a wooden cutting board, a play wood and knife and then some different foods that Velcro together and you can kind of cut them apart with a knife. So pretty, pretty fun gift. And like I said, very appropriate for chef Christina to be getting him. I'll probably grow into it a little bit more over the coming months and years. But right now, Sarah part is pretty much to just put the wood in knife in his mouth and crawl around with it. But he's been enjoying playing with those. And then for me, I had to do what any self-respecting father that likes the game of golf would do for his son went with the toy golf clubs, just the classic number one seller on Amazon came with a little bag, three plastic clubs, a driver, iron putter, the plastic golf balls, a little hole with a flag you can set up. And I'll tell you what, he's been super into them more than I was expecting, honestly. Every single morning, since then, the golf clubs have been the first toy that he goes for. He's obviously not swinging the club or anything like that, but he does try to take the club and hit the ball. Seems he's at least somewhat understanding of the concept. That morning, I put the PGA tournament on TV, so I was trying, and while he was holding the club and trying to show him, hey, look, those guys, the thing that they have, that's what you have to. But it's been fun to see him playing with those and we'll only get more fun in the coming weeks here as he grows and get him standing, get him actually swinging the club and see if he wants to become a golfer as he gets older. So that was the morning and how we just kicked things off with the three of us. And then that night, we had both of our families over. Everyone was able to make it, which was awesome. Both sets of grandparents, all of his aunts and uncles had nice little family get together. Liam was having a blast going around from person to person. Everyone enjoyed their time with him. So that was nice. As we've said on some of the past episodes, he's had some incidents where he's been a little bit attached to Christina or attached to myself, but didn't have any of that on this birthday night. He was spreading the love and hanging out with everyone, had our dinner and then the main event, of course, singing happy birthday to Liam. And then we got the smash cake involved a homemade smash cake from his grandma. I must add. This kid, kid is living large. And when it came to the cake, Liam handled it just about as we expected. He's always tends to be a little bit more on the cautious side and his reaction to the cake was no different. You may see some kids that are diving in, making a mess, getting cake and icing all over the place. That's not how Liam rolls. He was more of a take one finger, dip it in the icing, test the waters, taste the piece of it, look up smiling like, oh yeah, this is tasty. So yeah, he enjoyed it, ate a good bit of it. And it's funny. We have this one video of him and it's just like dead silence as he's sitting there, eating the cake. And meanwhile, you don't see it, but there's 16 of us behind the camera watching him. So that was fun. Kirsten got him this little crown too that he was wearing pretty much the whole night. So he was in full on King form, King of the family. Then his grandparents got him some gifts and outfits that he opened. Sans and uncles all chipped in and got him a pass to the Elmwood Zoo, which I'm really looking forward to. He'll take him probably this spring, summer, whenever he goes to the animals. He loves the animals in all his books. I'm sure he's going to appreciate them in real life as well. And that was his actual birthday day that kicked off the festivities and then two days later on Saturday, we had a bit of a larger birthday party with some friends and family. Prior to this, we had gone back and forth a little bit on exactly what we wanted to do for the first birthday party, where we wanted to have it, if we even wanted to have one to begin with. Because it's a little tricky with a first birthday. I mean, my personal view on it is that a first birthday is really more for the parents than for the kids. And so with that in mind, we landed on one of our favorite activities, which is bowling. We went to the place Brooklyn Bowl right in the neighborhood here, a fish town, which is where we live with that we went with a little bit of a fish theme. Liam is officially one kind of thing. And yeah, we ended up having a pretty solid turnout. 45 or so people attended, I think 11 of them were kids. And with the planning of it all. It worked out really well. They originally, when you called the host an event, it was going to cost an arm and a leg to do it. They wanted like $3,000, which is just absolutely ridiculous. So instead, we found a nice workaround. We just booked four lanes and then booked two tables and then had everyone show up. So worked out really well. All the kids that were there got to bowl. We didn't mix a friends and fam. Yours truly, you know, not a big deal, but bold, 179. I was pretty happy with that. Definitely one of my best ones of all time. But anyways, that's besides the point. More importantly, Liam had a blast once again. Was going from person to person, getting help, got some picks of him with the bowling balls. He was hanging out with the other kids. Was crushing all the food. Apparently, ended up being a big fan of fried pickles because they had these fried pickles that looked like french fries at first. I gave him one thing he was a french fry. And he liked fried pickles. He had several of those. He was just crushing those tater tots, you know, all the good stuff that you get when it comes to bowling alley food. And Christina brought the crown again. He wore that pretty much the whole day. On his king level again, sung happy birthday to the little king one last time with all the people there. And that was about it for the party. It was a two hour deal, 3 30 to 5 30. Everyone had a good time, felt like I got to spend time talking with a bunch of people. Had some of my cousins there, some aunts and uncles and some friends too. So that was the baby's birthday party. And then, as I said, baby's first birthday is really about the parents. So my parents then took Liam back to the house afterwards to watch him put him to bed, all of that good stuff. And then Christina and I went out to the brewery across the street with some of our friends to keep the party going, hung out for a couple more hours. And not to throw under the bus, but Christina, not typically much of a drinker at both these places. They had some heavy higher percentage beers going on. So she was she was feeling a little hung over today, which is not something that happens too often. in our household. So mom, going hard on the baby's first birthday, but why not? She deserved it full year of motherhood. So I tried to watch Liam as much as possible today so that she could rest up on the couch because she was a little bit on the struggle bus. And just like that birthday week is over. Can't believe it. We officially have a one year old with that. The podcast is coming to an end. Obviously, we're because these one years old, we're beyond 52 weeks. This is only episode 50, but that's okay. We fell behind at one point and it kind of works out better this way. Anyways, I was able to break down the B day celebrations themselves. And then as I said at the top of the show, Christina going to be joining me for the next episode, get her thoughts on her first year. As a mom, just talk about the parent life in general, do a recap on all the things. And then I'll come back for one final episode to really put a bow on it all and talk about what's next and anything else that we got going on. And there we have it. Liam's first birthday celebration. Really, really a good time. Thanks to everyone that came out and supported. Also got good amount of gifts from everyone. So thanks to anyone that that provided those. And thanks to all of you for tuning in all these weeks. It's really been a pleasure sharing my journey here with all of you. Good stuff. And we'll be back for next episode with the podcast or extraordinary Christina herself. Looking forward to that one. Going to be a great episode. I am sure of it. All right, everyone. I'll talk to you then. (upbeat music)