A Birthday Party, and a Birth. All in the Same Day.

About a month ago, I sent out this totally lame birthday invitation via email to our family:

Hi everyone!

For Bennett’s birthday, I think we’re just going to invite all of you over to our house on Sunday, April 5th in the afternoon for snacks and cake. Maybe things will get really exciting and Michon will go into labor during the party!

Just let me know if you’ll be here – and don’t worry about it if you can’t make it!

Little did I know that Michon would nearly take me literally. Though she was scheduled to be induced on Tuesday, which is Bennett’s actual birthday, her water broke around 2:30 this morning at home, just ten hours shy of birthday party time, and William John (who will be called Will) arrived at 1:19pm, with the help of a vacuum extractor (what is it with the babies in this family?) after 2.5 hours of pushing. Not too shabby for a first labor, huh? He weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces, and was 21 inches long.  We waited to see him until after we celebrated Bennett’s birthday, so now you have to wait until the end of this post for pictures of their beautiful boy. Mean, aren’t I?

Stick with me…the party was fun and will be retold in picture and video form.

Bennett was SUPER excited to open his presents…I wish that our video camera wasn’t a dinosaur and I could post some of the video my brother Jake took, but I can’t. I do have a couple of short clips, though.

Here he is opening Luke’s present:

And here’s another one that’s pretty indicative of what he was like the whole time (I SO wish I had been recording when he opened Eric and Andrea’s card, and got $3 to go with his gift…it was hilarious):

here he is with his birthday cash!

dana told us that jake was responsible for wrapping the gift (water guns)

So, my possibly-red/green-colorblind child requested a red cake this year. Despite the fact that I try not to serve my kids artificially-colored foods when possible, I agreed and baked him a red velvet cake (just from a box). Then, this morning he told me that he wanted a green cake instead. So I sprinkled some green sugar sprinkles on top…I honestly have no idea if he could tell that they were green, but I did it anyway. Classy cake decorating, no? He wanted Scooby Doo, and those edible image things kinda gross me out, so this was the best I could do while exerting virtually no effort.

pardon the horrible exposure - i love the look on his face in this pic!

how can he be 4 already?

OK…so now it’s time for baby pictures! Almost. I forgot to mention that I didn’t know Michon was in labor until 10:45 today, since I didn’t get my text and voicemail messages from Zach until AFTER my family all arrived today for the party. I was so ticked that I’d missed hours of anticipation! Especially because Zach’s message was so funny; I would have loved to have been corresponding with him throughout the process.

I don’t have any of Michon and Zach with Will…her dinner got to her room right when we did, so we let her have her last meal in peace eat!

here's the whole crew, minus my dad, waiting to meet will, who was eating when we got there.

look at that sweet baby face!

i don't think i could be more excited to be an aunt! jack henry was checking him out, too.

papa and his 2 april birthday grandsons

papa, luke and will

what is it about a newborn's face that makes you able to stare at it for hours?

It isn’t visible in the pictures, but he has a head full of thick, dark hair.

Now…time for me to crash. For some reason all three of my kids slept horribly last night, thus, I did, too.  Maybe THEY heard my cell phone ringing in the middle of the night…