Birthday #1

One year ago right now (CA time) I was in a tub of warm water getting ready to wrap up the final stretch of the hardest work I have done to date - giving birth to Connor, my baby, who was born one hour and seven minutes before the spring equinox. Fast forward a year and here we are in Japan sharing soba noodles with a beautiful little boy who completes our world. Happy Birthday #1 Connor!

The bad news is that our little guy who never gets sick has caught a cold just in time for the festivities. He is really not feeling well today at all, but by nature he is not a complainer and has been in pretty good spirits despite the cough and perpetual runny nose. He opened his Anpanman present this morning after breakfast and then did a bit of clowning around for the camera:

An unexpected birthday surprise today was spotting the regular-sized version of the bread truck on the street that is one of Connor's new toy trucks from Isetan. The toy looks exactly like the real truck!

This afternoon we ran a bit late so missed the parade portion of the St. Patrick's Day Festival in Motomachi, arriving just in time for some live Irish music and dancing.  It was a gorgeous, warm, windy, sunny spring day - perfect weather to be outside walking around:

Then we headed home for cake. Connor had three mini cakes that we spent the afternoon shopping for yesterday in Sogo -- the three prettiest little cakes in the whole dessert department!  Cake #1 was lemon/tangerine and had a cute white chocolate ladybug hanging out on top, cake #2 was dark chocolate raspberry and cake #3 was strawberries & cream.  I would say that cake isn't a huge hit with Connor, but it's unclear if this is because he is not feeling well, or just does not have a sweet tooth.  We laid the three cakes out in front of him, sang happy birthday, blew out the candle and then waited to see what would happen.  He looked at each cake, touched the lemon and chocolate cakes tentatively, wiped his fingers on his chubby little thigh and then started to cry.  We helped him to taste a bit of the chocolate cake, but he really wasn't impressed at all.  Maybe we should have just put a candle in a steamed bun.  Hope he feels better tomorrow!

(Tried to upload videos of the Irish dancing/singing and the cake and experienced technical difficulties, so the above photos are "snapshots" from the video).