On July 7th, 2004, Reid left behind his first year, with a collection of memories, a lot of soiled outfits, and about a million diapers. The first observance of his birthday was celebrated during his intercontinental journey from home to Philadelphia to London to Egypt and back. (You can read about it here and here.) However, an official stateside observance was in order, and never one to shirk from a party, Reid his the ground running. Actually, he frequently his the ground, because he has quickly graduated from walking to a still quite unsteady form of running, usually with a prop, such as a defunct computer keyboard, a working phone snatched from an unwitting parent, or this enormous beach ball (a gift from the nice people at Independence Air when Reid's grandfather was the first passenger to fly from Greenville/Spartanburg to Dulles Airport, inexplicably).

Once Reid was sufficiently revved up, we got the party started. The first order of business was to open gifts. Baby toys are great because they make a lot of noise, usually have about forty things going on at once, and are very difficult to remove from their packaging. Notice the expression or pure joy (or something) on my face as Reid and I take unwrap the Fisher Price Peek-a-Blocks Poppity Pop Elephant while my mom looks on in glee.

Reid also received wonderful gifts with little shapes and key rings and bears and monkeys and so much more. Kids with gifts always attract other kids, so Reid's cousins Rachel and Samantha, as well as one of the newest members of our baby universe, Aviva (seen above enjoying a bottle with her dad, Aaron). After some experimentation with his new toys, Reid was ready for the main event: cake destruction.

Although initially pleased with his pointy hat and plastic birthday bib, Reid was quite concerned about his first birthday cake. Perhaps it was performance anxiety. He took a few timid shots at the cake, but it seemed his heart wasn't really in it. Then we gave him a spoon. Now, Reid is a real utensil man. Feeding him is an challenge in many ways, not least of which is playing a strange version of "capture the flag" in which the feeder must protect the spoon from Reid at any cost. So handing him the spoon was the perfect ingredient to kickstart the cake negotiations.

Of course, once things got going, Reid had a great time with the cake. He even tried to feed some to his Grammie. The party was a super time, complete with balloons, and big smiles. An amazing first year, with many more to come, for sure.