Lots of family over here. And sickness.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, Tyler has turned 1 year old. That's right! This time last year I was staying up from 2 to 6 in the morning, monitoring a baby who couldn't even open his eyes all the way. When you pinched his cheeks *nothing happened*. All he could eat was formula. He didn't sleep through the night. I didn't have to go to work in the morning. It's been a heck of a year, watching this little guy grow up from his larval stage to a fully functional pupal toddler. He's walking a lot, he wants things and has figured out ways to ask for them, he has emotions and desires, he can learn things. He's a lot more fun, now.

And being as he's a toddler, and will be soon tearing around the world with reckless abandon, everyone got him adorable Carhartts overalls. Which are great, because the knees are double-stiched, perfect for all the rowdy activity Tyler will be getting up to as a toddler now.

So we threw a birthday party for him...okay, if we're being honest, the first birthday party really isn't for the kids. Maybe not even the second, either. It's for us. We invited over a bunch of friends, mostly ones with kids, and had cake and made hot dogs and socialized. Tyler was busy nailing the transition from two naps per day to just one, so he was asleep from 12:00 to 2:00 and missed the early parts of his birthday. But never mind, it let me have more time to grill hot dogs.

The cake was, as predicted, my favorite part of the proceedings. We got him his own cake, dropped it on his high chair and let him do whatever he wanted to it. We took video, I'll let you know when we put it up somewhere. Anyway, ht started off a little tentative, but really started to enjoy getting this stuff all over his hands. Jess would feed him little bites here and there to eat, but he seemed less interested in eating, and more in making an *incredible* mess. He was wearing his Carheartts, though, so he was well protected. Then at the end I sat all close to him so he could make adorable messes all over my face too. I was a very proud dad.

We got some nice presents, too. We got him a little kids laptop, which he seems to enjoy a lot more than I thought he would. He gets really into pushing all the buttons and then opening and closing the laptop to hear it make noise.

Also, it's visitor time for us! We had Jessie's sister and her mom (who is still here) visiting us this weekend. Mostly for the birthday, but also because we like them. So we took them out to Innerspace Caverns, a natural cavern formation near us that we actually hadn't been to before. In the grand scheme of all the caverns everywhere it's probably not the greatest you could visit, but it's really neat to explore even just the areas to which they've put trails. Makes me want to maybe come by sometime to try their more extreme expeditions. The ones where you squeeze into tiny spaces. Maybe. We'd have to see. I'm not really shaped for tight spaces.

So after sending sister and her boys home, Tyler and I have been alternating illnesses for a while. He had a fever that hung around for a few days over the weekend, and when we took him into the doctor, she noticed that he had a couple of really bad ear infections. Which is crazy, because *we would never have known*. Seriously, the kid doesn't make a fuss, and I have no idea why. I've had an ear infection recently. It sucks. For some reason, he doesn't feel like making a big deal of it. Anyway, we got him some antibiotics yesterday, and then I went off to Judo, which has been going swimmingly, by the way, and then I got home and...got really sick.

I was pretty fevery last night, and very, very achy. It's died down, thank goodness, but I'm still making sure I'm never more than a few steps away from some painkillers. Which is a bummer, because there are some classes going on at work that I really wanted to take. I'll catch days 2 and 3, but I had to review the day 1 stuff at home. Which turned out not to be too big of a deal, because I knew a lot of it already. Bad time to get sick, though.

So I definitely owe you guys pictures from the party and the caves and the like. I'll let you know when I get those up. Also, this is post #750 on this blog. Numbers, right?

-N