Rubber Ducky Explosion and Growing Baby

Sly is 11 months old now (well, technically, tomorrow). This makes me realize just how quickly the time has gone by. I cannot believe he's almost ONE!

My mind has been planning out what the do for a birthday party for him. Although I fully realize that he won't really care what sort of party he has, nor will he remember a single bit of it, I do want to put in a little bit of effort to make it cute and baby-appropriate.

I decided on a rubber ducky "theme", since Sly is obsessed with rubber duckies. In my mind, the extent of rubber duckiness was going to be some sort of cute homemade invitations (which are currently in progress - will post about them later), and - if I could manage it, being that I have no experience in cake-decorating - a rubber ducky cake.

I made the mistake, however, of mentioning this to my mother. Why don't I ever learn? My mom goes CRAZY with shopping anytime she has the slightest excuse. One day I casually mention to her that I want to make a rubber ducky cake, and the next day, she's calling me to tell me about the extraordinary amount of unnecessary rubber ducky items that she ALREADY ORDERED online!!

Some of the things I remember: Tons of mini-duckies to float in punch (and she bought me a new punchbowl too, since mine broke a couple years ago), felt ducky wall decorations, an 18-inch inflatable duck, ducky necklace party favors, a new ducky onesie for Sly, a ducky t-shirt for him, balloons, 2 tablecloths (we only have one table!!), some duck that all the guests are supposed to sign, and the worst one - 12 inflatable rubber ducky coasters. What?! There was a lot of other stuff that I can't even remember. So...this party is going to be a bit over-the-top now. And it looks like every future child we have is going to be having a rubber ducky themed 1st birthday, since what the heck else am I supposed to do with all this stuff?!

Since we're trying to keep this party small - immediate family, the godparents, and a couple close friends only - I don't think there will even be ANY other kids there. haha.

*********
In other news, Sly has been confidently saying his first word over and over: "ball." It started out more like "BA!" but today he's been adding a slight l-sound at the end :-)

Also, my cousin got him to successfully walk across the floor to me (a distance of about 4 feet) several times in a row! Ahh, my baby's growing up!