First Birthday!

The primary purpose of this post is NOT to brag about Pittsburgh, the City of Champions, the first city to win both the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup in the same year. However, having put up a disclaimer, it is objectively true that Pittsburgh kicks ass.

No, the primary point of this post is to discuss Henry's first birthday party. How quickly time flies! It seems like only a few months ago that Dad totally stopped posting to the family blog. Wait, that actually was only a few months ago. In all seriouslness, neither Mom nor Dad can believe how quickly the first year has disappeared. Henry is no longer a baby, he is now a toddler.

Henry's first birthday party was held at his Pittsburgh grandparent's house (a hearty shoutout to G-Pap and LuLu for helping us pull this off!). More than 40 family members and friends were there to celebrate. Though billed as "his" special day, it was really more of a celebration for Mom and Dad, as evidenced by their decision to torture him by making him wear a special outfit to open presents.

Not many 1 year old's can pull off wearing a cape. We got one of the lucky few.

And there were many, many presents - Mom and Dad were blown away by the generosity of our family and friends. Books and clothes were popular choices, though he also got plenty of toys. The first present Henry opened turned out to be his favorite, but classic annoy-your-friends-by-giving-their-kids-the-noisiest-toy-you-can-find presents always are. (Nice work, Travis and Molly!) Fortunately, Dad is immune to annoyance by noise. Unfortunately, Mom is not, and has already had to tell Dad to stop playing with Henry's guitar.

A cape, a crown, and a guitar? He's destined to be the coolest superhero ever.

His other most notable present was LuLu's acceptance of LuLu as the name that he could use for her. Now he has grandmother's LoLo and LuLu. Cute, right?

After presents it was time for cake. Mom and Dad were originally in a bit of a quandary. Since Henry doesn't watch too much TV, he isn't really "into" anything, making it difficult to select a party theme. Dinosaurs seemed like a safe bet, and is on the short list of things that we try to promote an interest in (others include Monsters, Bugs, Jungle Animals, and Science). Luckily, Bethel Bakery really knocked it out of the park on this one. Seriously, how cool did this cake turn out?

In order to satisfy long-standing first birthday requirements, Henry had a cake of his own. Below, see the full progression, from "Really, you guys are going to let me do this? You're not going to take it away?" to "Too much cake! I am defeated!"

All in all, it was as close to perfect as we could ask for. We have a wonderful family, and great friends, and it was beyond fulfilling to share this fantastic day with them.

Post Holiday Post Football Blogging Resumes

The editors apologize for the lack of updates, but the holidays were just too much to write about. Don't misunderstand - they were great, Henry and Dad and Mom had a great holiday season, and Henry is enjoying his abundance of new toys. The problem is that there is simply too much to try to capture. The effort involved in trying to write a post that will meet expectations and sum up the entire experience was giving me heartburn, and in putting it off, I've been derelict in my blog-updating duties.

So, I'm going to skip it. Hopefully it suffices to say that the holidays were great; now we'll move on.

Most years, the post-holiday season in Pittsburgh means one thing - playoff football! You may have heard that our team, the Pittsburgh Steelers just won their sixth Lombardi Trophy, merely proving what we already knew to be true: the Pittsburgh Steelers are the most successful franchise in the NFL.

Henry watched most of the games with Mom and Dad, and the Beres grandparents G-Pap and Lulu/Mimi (still working on her name, but that's a whole different subject). During the post-season, Henry would learn to be a little wary of Steelers' touchdowns, as the whole room would break into cheers and yells.

Henry watching the Super Bowl pregame. (You can tell it's the pregame because he's not wearing his Steelers jersey. A very strict tradition in the Culbertson House is that jerseys are ONLY worn during the game. They go on at kickoff and come off when the game ends (or in special circumstances, after the celebration (see: Super Bowl, winning a Sixth)). This helps preserve the power of the jersey.)

...and that, Henry, is why he was the Defensive Player of the Year!

Halftime! Henry refused to wear his 3-D glasses.

After the win, with just a few of our vast selection of Terrible Towels.

After winning an NFL-record sixth National Championship - and can I tell you how good it feels just to type that? - it was time to hit the streets for a little bit of celebration, where our meticulously detailed Lombardi Trophy was a hit:

Us with few hundred of our new close friends

Henry's First Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. Henry may still be too young to get anything out of it - other than an appreciation for little colored lights - but it's still our First Christmas with him. In the finest tradition of torturing those you love, especially when they are too young to fight back, we took him went to see Santa Claus.

Not that it was all that much torture for him. As you can see, he really just didn't care.

Is this another one of those things I'll understand when I'm older? Whatever, I'm bored already.

It was part of a larger get-together, an opportunity to allow Henry and Austin to share their complete boredom with the man in the big red suit. You can't see it, but they are wearing nearly-matching outfits. Wuwu/Mimi/Grandma seems to think they are twins, and every major and minor holiday so far has featured some sort of matched outfit.

Props to the most photogenic Santa I've ever seen, btw.

The picture taking didn't stop at Santa's Photo Booth, Mom had to snap a couple of the little tyke under the Christmas tree. Below, the best of the bunch:

Henry's First Solid Food

At five and a half months, Henry has reached another milestone - today he ate solid food for the first time.

Though solid is a bit of a misnomer, as I've had tomato soups with more structural integrity than his rice cereal: one part powder to three parts liquid.

Pics below are from the second feeding of the day, where Henry is starting to get the hang of the experience, if not yet actually enjoying it.

Halloween

Seriously, who has the time to actually write posts anymore?

Mom and Dad and Henry on Halloween night:

Henry at his first Halloween party (at least, his first "kids" Halloween party):

Prepare yourself for, perhaps, the cutest photo of Henry yet:

A Day at the Pumpkin Patch

Late pictures from the day we spent at the Pumpkin Patch a few weeks ago. I'll keep the verbosity to a minimum (It was a farm, with lots of farm...stuff? That's really about all I could say.) and get straight to the pictures.

Dad and Henry's first time in a corn maze. Little known fact: even corn mazes get boring after a while.

Seriously, more corn? Whatever.

Lots of good pictures at the actual pumpkin patch.

Mom was more concerned with getting a picture than getting this mutant soul-sucking monster off of my back:

Henry and Dad chill on the hay ride back.

A Day at the Museum

Who knew? September 27th was National Museum Day, and the Carnegie Museums participated. Total Culbertson family savings: 30 bucks! That's practically a case of beer (Dad buys expensive beer).

It was our first opportunity to see the recently redone dinosaur exhibit. Not only is it really beautiful, its as educational (museums educational? - news at 11:00!) as you want it to be: if you just want to walk through and look at the reconstructed skeletons, you'll be happy. On the other hand, if you have the time and inclination to use the interactive exhibits, you'll be rewarded with a great deal of pretty cool information. Henry is on the far side of the first category (and Mom might have an even shorter attention span), so I didn't get to dig very deep, but I did get to watch one cool little video about how paleontologist use the shape of the bones in the legs to figure out the gait. It would be cool to go back and spend some time exploring.

Henry, mildly amused

One of the coolest things about the refurb is how well it uses the space. The exhibit butts up against the Carnegie Library, and the windows of the library offer an unobstructed view onto the exhibit.

For the record, Henry made it through about half the museum - but that's still better than Mom usually does.

Mom, Dad, and Henry