I’m still in denial that my baby boy is one. While he is still little for his age, bald and not walking I can pretend that he is still a little baby, right?

On Sunday 5th March we had a little family party for him where we invited close family and friends. We did debate whether we should book somewhere and go all out as we had the dilemma of how do we mix family and friends with all his little baby chums but in the end, we decided two small parties at home would work out better.

Ethan’s birthday was on the 7^th March so on the 5^th we had family and close friends over and on Saturday 11^th we had his little baby friends over. I’m only blogging about the family party as otherwise this post will be too long and far too photo heavy.

It was an extremely special day and if I’m honest a very emotional one for me too. I could not believe everyone’s generosity and felt quite overwhelmed by the gifts for Ethan. Of course, he was more interested in the cards and balloons but with most people buying him clothes he is now fully kitted out in his 12-18 month wardrobe. Word must have got out that we love dinosaurs as almost every item of clothing had dinosaurs on it in one way or another.

I even made him a dinosaur themed birthday cake. We had discussed a few different ideas about what I would bake for him and at one point we were going to go down the monkey route as his nickname is monkey but in the end dinosaurs won over. I used my go to chocolate cake recipe and iced it in buttercream as I'm not a fan of sugarpaste. As time was not on my side I bought some little plastic dinosaurs and dino printed bunting to decorate and used the micro chocolate eggs from Sainsburys to give the effect of dinosaur eggs.

Considering it was thrown together pretty quickly I'm really please with how the cake turned out. Ethan's face lit up when he saw it and we sang Happy Birthday to him but what I didn't expect was to get all emotional and have tears running down my cheeks as we sang to him.

The first birthday is such a milestone and not just for the baby. For us parents it marks a whole year since our lives were turned upside down by the arrival of our darling boy. We made it through feeding issues, sleepless nights (still working on that one), poonamis, weaning, returning to work and everything in between. Gone are the days of impromptu date nights and weekend lie-in's, we've traded those for picking food up of the floor and being kicked in the face by a smiley boy at 6am on a Saturday morning but we wouldn't change it for the world (well maybe the odd lie-in).

We had such a lovely weekend. My parents and brother flew in for it, my youngest brother travelled up from London, Mr T's family came over and our close friends stopped by all bearing gifts for our special boy. He truly was spoiled and we couldn't have asked for a nicer day.

Here is Ethan's birthday (and the cake!) in pictures...