A Hoot of a Birthday

We celebrated Will's 1st B'day on Australia Day (26th Jan) with a lovely BBQ with friends and family. Pete and I did the invites (most of the credit has to go to Pete's awesome editing skills though. Gotta love the free Gimp editing program).


It was really relaxed and a perfect 24degree day. I was so glad we didn't do it on the 28th like we were going to originally as Will's cake would have melted and it would have been really unbearably warm for everyone.

I sent Pete and my dad ahead to the park to secure a good possie and a BBQ. They got the very last shaded table and BBQ - it was already packed by 9:30am. Phew! We spread out picnic blankets and chairs and enjoyed being under the shade of a tree. We had a great turn out with lots of lovely friends and I'm so thankful Will had at least one set of Grandparents to celebrate with. It would have felt a bit sad not to have them there.
We had one drama when the BBQ wasn't working and our lunch took FOREVER to cook. Pete ended up moving to another BBQ when someone had finished using theirs. I was stressing a bit about not being able to provide a lunch except for bread and tomato sauce...but it all worked out in the end thank goodness!
For the last few months I knew I wanted to have a loose theme for Will's party. He absolutely loves a kids program on the ABC here in Australia called "Giggle and Hoot." So I thought we could have that as a theme and I wanted to make him a cake shaped like Hoot (the owl in the show). I went online and got lots of great ideas and shamelessly copied a few of them and added my own variations to them :-)

Mum wanted to make a basic pinata - not the paper mache kind though. She had a great idea of just using a brown paper bag and crepe paper. I thought the end result was fantastic.

I baked LOTS of carrot cakes in the week leading up to Will's birthday to test which one was the most moist and delicious. The winner was the Docking family cake. A lovely friend shared their family recipe with me. I'll have to post it another time if you want to try it out...
I baked the cake and cut and assembled it and then when mum arrived the day before the party and made the icing and did a fantastic job on the piping. I'm not one with much finesse so I was glad to hand over that job to mum :-)
Check out the amazing cake. It was really yummy too!

The kids enjoyed the pinata. Will and I watched. Will got a bit upset though and started wimpering when the kids started whacking the pinata...he stopped after a few moments though

We filled the pinata with lots of cadbury choccies and no joke, when the pinata broke the spilled choccies were gone in seconds. ha ha

We let Will have his first ever chocolate. He loved eating a freddo frog!

Pete persevered for ages trying to light the candle but we told him to give up after a few minutes. It was just too windy and we were all eager to eat the yummy cake. We sang Happy Birthday and I cut the cake on Will's behalf. I was glad some people came back for seconds....

It was such a great day!

A year of Will...

I find myself looking back at Will's baby pictures all the time and I thought it would be nice to have a few to highlight how much he has grown and changed over the first year of his life. It was really hard to pick only a few....

26th Jan 2011. Newborn William David Watt

Peter having his first hold of Will. 26th Jan 2011

One of the first non hospital family shots.Will is about 3-4 days old.
I love that he is looking up at us in this shot...

Grannny Jones having one of her first holds. 4 days old

In his Bee Suit grandad Jones bought for him. 1 week old

1 week old and already cheeky. LOVE his curls.

5 weeks old - his blessing day

3 months old - ready for church

almost 4 months old - ready for an outing into Melbourne

4 1/2 months old - ready for church

5/6 months old - sitting up and very pleased with himself

6 months old

7 months old

9 months old

10 months old


11 months old


The big 1

What Will likes

Will is an absolutely awesome son. I couldn't have hoped for a happier, content and less fussy baby. Sure he has his moments but for the most part he is easy to please, entertain, feed, and just live with. He loves Peek a Boo, chasies, hide and seek and squeezing in between my legs. He loves being sat on your lap and tipped backwards. He loves being thrown around and he loves when we dance with him. He has ALWAYS loved Billy Joel and he remains his favourite it seems. Will used to love being read to and even turned the pages from a very young stage but it seemed to get harder to read to him as he started to crawl. He just didn't want to sit and read AT ALL.

I've been really making an effort to read with him every day and to find books that are interactive. He loves quiet books, pop up books and audio books. A trip to the local library the other day was the best thing I've done. I'm ashamed to say that he was 1 before I took him to the library. It was one of those things I'd been meaning to do for ages and it just never happened. Although Will wasn't interested in the books at all he had a blast at the library. He found a baby seat shaped like a dog that he pushed around the library, he made friends with a cute little girl and he enjoyed pulling the kids books off the shelf and walking around with them for awhile before dropping them and then repeating the process with a new book. I figured as long as he's enjoying the environment that's the main thing. I found a bunch of books I thought he'd like and I sat them up in a pile on the coffee table when we got home and he went over to the pile and picked a book up. I started reading to him and he actually sat on my lap for a minute. I kept persevering with this for a couple of days and he is now sitting on my lap a little longer each time and a couple of days ago he surprised me by selecting a book and bringing it over to me. I was THRILLED!
I'd love to know what some of your tips are for encouraging your kids to read etc. Though now I think I've got the ball rolling with Will it'll be easier to get him excited about reading.

I love this video. It's Will at 3 months old turning the pages as I read to him. Love Dr Seuss!