{Holiday: Aksel's 1st Birthday!}

Our sweet babe just turned one! And the good news is that his birthday dramatically improved from this point...

Primarily because we very quickly acknowledged that removing the cupcake from in front of him, even for a minute, was a baaaaad idea. The kid had never even had a cupcake! How did he know it was worth missing that much?! Perceptive little guy. The picture above was the result of momentarily swiping the cupcake in an attempt to remove a portion of that massive pile of icing. After that I had to go into full-on ninja mode just to remove the cupcake liner before he started shoveling.

I mean look at that determination, perfect form for minimum crumb loss.

I think it's safe to say he enjoyed the cupcake.

But let's rewind. The cupcake incident actually occurred the day after Aksel's birthday. 

The day of his actual birthday began as all birthdays do in our house, with presents! Sadly I don't have any pictures because both Andreas and I were too busy monitoring Anders 'assisting' with gift unwrapping to whip out the camera. We busied ourselves the rest of the day playing with new toys and reading new books, only taking the occasional break for a Chick-Fil-A ice cream or McAllister's macaroni and cheese. Basically everything a one year old boy's dreams are made of. And with all that excitement, I flat out forgot to get to the cupcake place before it closed.  Buttttt, our boy deserved his cupcake, so we just picked one up the next day!

The birthday celebration continued on Saturday morning with a low-key brunch.

There was plenty of yummy food...

...and a bunch of black and white photos to share some of our favorite memories over the past year.

In lieu of a birthday cake, I opted to artistically stack donuts on a cake platter. Eat your heart out, Pinterest moms ;)

Aksel didn't seem to mind one bit. While the parents ate and mingled, the kids crawled, cruised, walked, and ran around the house, playing with toys, begging for donuts, and generally having a great time.

What a joy this year has been. Aksel has increased the size of our family, expanded our capacity to love, inhibited our ability to sleep, bestowed the. best. cuddles., and tolerated a fair amount of rough affection from his older brother. He is the perfect fit in our foursome. We love you, Aksel!