Dexy's 1 Birthday!

OK. So Dexy's birthday was on May 6th and this is way behind, but we don't have the internet at our place. I had to remember to bring my pictures to my sister, Heather's house for Sunday dinner. And I have a LOT of pictures from our time here! I decided that I would just try to catch us up a little. Since this was Dexy's 1st b-day, it' a big deal, so we'll go back and cover that first. Dex loves animals! They are his favorite. He's only one and he already knows the sounds that a sheep, a cow, a pig, a duck, and a dog make because he just loves them and always wants me to read him animal stories. We, therefore decided that we should take him to the zoo for his birthday. He loved it! And Ollie thought it was pretty cool, too! k

It was kind of cold that day and a lot of the animals weren't outside, but it was still fun and the boys liked it. We saw elephants, giraffes, peguins, camels and a lot of monkeys and primates and small animals. One little howler monkey came right over to the window to get close to Ollie.

They also have one of those fun, round stones that you can push because there's water running over it. The boys really liked that. Anything with water is fun!

But what they liked the best was the playground. We stopped to play there on our way out and it was great. Dexy's favorite, unexpectedly, was the teter-totter! He thought it was a blast and Ollie of all people didn't really like it. Very weird, since Ollie is generally our crazy, dangerous child. But we put him on it and he almost instantly wanted off. Dexy, on the other hand, didn't want to get off!
Ollie liked the slides. He went to the pink elephant slide first, but then we found a big, tube slide that looked like a snake. It had fangs on the side of the exit and everything. It was quite a fast slide, with a lot of stairs to climb, but Ollie ran right over and did it all by himself. Now this was the opposite - I took Dexy down the slide twice and that was enough for him, but Ollie wanted to slide down again and again and again!

Then we went back to the Bowles house to have dinner and cake for our little b-day party. Marie and her family came over to celebrate with us. It was great to have lots of family there to play with us for Dexy's birthday and to get to see them one more time before we left for the summer.
It was a fantastic 1st b-day, I think! I'm glad that we were able to celebrate it and not let his b-day get lost in the chaos like I did with Ollie's 1st b-day (sorry, again, my Ollie boy! I'll never again let a birthday fall by the wayside)! And now my Dex is a big, one-year old, boy. He's offically a baby no more. Sniff, sniff, cry, cry! I'm kind of sad to loose my baby, but I am loving the fun one-year old stage. He is getting so big.

Dexy is developing a personality of his own. He loves to stand up on high places (such as the table or the top of a playground) and stomp just one foot. We've started calling it "The Dexy Stomp" and we even sing a song about it when he does it. He loves reading stories, swimming (he's less scared than Ollie and likes to lay on his tummy and kick his feet while trying to blow bubbles in the water) and teasing his big brother. Kind of backwards. I know, right?! But he drives Ollie crazy with his teasing sometimes. He's generally so happy and pleasant and is such a sweet kid, but when he's sad he is so sad! He has such a loud, pathetic cry that makes you feel so sad for him. He's also getting so he likes to laugh and play with people. We love our sweet Dexy boy and are so glad that he pushed his way into our family when he did!

Happy Birthday beautiful, one-year old, boy! We love you so much!!