Will's a year old! Which is also the length of time it will take you to read this post!

I'm a firm believer that birthdays are SPECIAL. As in the birthday person is treated extremely well all day long - they have immunity when it comes to doing anything wrong, they get to pick the dinner menu, and they shouldn't have to go to school if it falls on a weekday. Reasonable, right?

As for the latter, as a January 18th birthday, it was one extreme or the other for me. I was either taking end of semester final exams on my birthday or I had it off thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - those years were wonderful! I tried to give Clyde and Will the same gift, and I think I did pretty well. Clyde's birthday (September 1st) will fall on Labor Day every few years, and Will's birthday (March 26th) should almost always be during Spring Break. So this past week found us on a Spring Break adventure to Utah celebrating baby Will's first birthday.

(We drove down on Monday and stayed with Sam and Terri through Friday, then we stayed with Smith's Friday and Saturday nights and drove home Sunday. There are many pictures to show and stories to tell, but my 'mom guilt' is hitting hard that I haven't posted about my baby's birthday, so those will have to wait a bit!)

I decided to go with a zoo theme for baby Will's birthday - that way I could use the teddy bear 'baby's first birthday' hats/napkins/etc decor I already had without replicating Clyde's Teddy Bear Picnic first birthday theme. We went to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake on Tuesday morning (if you're too impatient to wait for my post here's Terri's excellent recap) and then Terri and I put Chef Duff and the Ace of Cakes crew to shame with our fabulous zoo cake for the official party on Thursday:

It was an excellent collaborative effort: I mixed, Terri baked, Terri frosted, I sprinkled, Terri fenced, Chuck animal'ed, I lettered, Sam and Clyde watched, and Will banged pots and pans on the floor oblivious to it all!
Family picture! It's difficult to see, but I want to assure everyone that the children are dressed appropriately: Will is wearing a Zoo Boise shirt and Clyde is wearing a zebra/safari shirt.

Will was not the happiest birthday boy, bless his little heart. He wasn't feeling well all week, so I ended up taking him in to a doctor in Orem who found a double ear infection, but then the antibiotics kept making him throw up :(. The rest of us enjoyed eating the cake, though!


Will is such a sweet, mellow baby which I count as a tender mercy since it provides a balance to his extremely active older brother. Will loves touch, he can usually be soothed with a deep back rub. He takes delight in growling, clicking his tongue, and faking us out on when he'll walk. The week before Spring Break he took 3-5 steps in a row on several different occasions but nothing since. He's kept his baby blue eyes, his hair gets lighter with each hair cut and he's currently sporting seven teeth. His check-up is Tuesday, but I think he's about 22 lbs and lately I've been grabbing shorts for him from Clyde's drawer; I figure this summer they'll both share the 2T clothes!

Will definitely does things on his own timeline - he's yet to take an interest in table food; he throws Cheerios, crackers, and even French fries straight to the floor and reaches for the banana/sweet potato baby food. We learned this about him early on, since he was scheduled for an April 1st c-section but came on his own almost a week earlier. The last few weeks before he was born, I was convinced he would come early since I was dilated to a 3 and SO tired of being pregnant (like that ever has any bearing on when a child comes!), but then my hopes were dashed when I hadn't made any progress in the five days between check-ups. I made my peace with the fact that I'd have to wait it out - that was Monday, March 24th. So on Wednesday morning when I started having contractions, I immediately dismissed them as useless Braxton-Hicks and continued watching Finding Nemo with Clyde and Chuck. I also had it in my head that if I did go into labor, my water would break before I had any contractions, since that's what had happened with Clyde (because pregnancy/labor/birth is the same with every child? Yeah right!).

So every few minutes throughout the day I'd have to stop and brace myself and wince in pain. Finally it got late enough in the day that I knew my doctor's office would be closing soon so we decided to time the 'contractions' for a while and call to see what his thoughts were. When he found out they were four-eight minutes apart, he incredulously ordered me to get my 'little buns down to the hospital' immediately. We got to St. Luke's at about four-thirty and handed Clyde over to my mom. After filling out paperwork and such, they took me back and found that I was dilated . . . (drumroll please) . . . NINE centimeters! This threw everyone into panic mode since labor after a previous c-section can be dangerous, especially since Will would still need to be delivered cesarean (narrow pelvis, poor Clyde got stuck after two hours of pushing, no need to try that again!).

They whisked Chuck away to change into scrubs (he looks SO cute in them, makes the whole thing worth it) and whisked me in to pre-op and William Patrick Izatt was delivered a short time later, tipping the scales at 7lbs 13oz.
Shortly after birth Couple weeks old Four months A bit over five months Six-seven months Nine months
Almost eleven months
Happy birthday baby Will! Your mommy loves you very much :)

P.S. I absolutely agree with all of you that my blog looks super awesome right now (and I toyed with taking credit for it) - it's actually the sweet design of my e-bff Jayna, whom I hopefully don't freak out by using the term 'e-bff'.