Second Annual Birth Class Reunion

This weekend was our second annual reunion with our birth class and their babies. You may remember that Tyler and I took Bradley classes to learn how to birth naturally. I know it's not everyone's style, but it's ours - what can I say, we're a little "crunchy." Anyway, they were amazing classes on so many levels and we credit them and our amazing doula (and ourselves, we worked pretty hard!) with Emma's perfect and beautiful natural birth.

The icing on the cake was that we took the classes with a lot of other couples who were similar to us, and we've stayed in contact. We get together every few months to catch up and watch the babies play, and us girls exchange e-mail almost weekly about everything - and I mean everything. We've been there for each other during super happy times, like our babies being born and mastering new things, and we've been there for each other through hard things, too, like babies needing to have surgery and mamas dealing with postpartum depression. Most recently, we celebrated our babies turning ONE! and what it meant to us that we had all made it in one piece. Their friendship has meant so much to me.

Last year, our babies looked like this. Look at them laying so nicely on the blanket. We took an almost duplicate picture this year.

Not!

This year, getting pictures of them together was difficult, because they were running every which way, being their busy little selves. Oh, it was fun, and I mean that so sincerely!

We showed up about an hour after the party started, and we were the first ones there. I guess that's how you know you're attending a party with parents and little ones - you show up an hour late and it turns out you're early. The party was at Milo's house, and Milo's house is super fun because it has a big water table. Emma was in love, and the two got right to work filling and emptying various containers with water.

After dumping water on each other a few times, the party turned into a naked baby party so that they wouldn't have to wear wet clothes all day.

They continued playing with water, asked Emma's Da-Da to blow them some bubbles,

and crawled through Milo's tunnel until the rest of the gang arrived. In this picture, Milo had just passed Emma while inside the tunnel. She wasn't so sure she liked that!

When the rest of the gang arrived, all things water-related continued to be the hit of the party.

This was the one and only group picture that we were able to get, and to get it we plopped them down at the exact same time, ran away as quickly as we could, and started snapping our cameras. I'd say it worked out pretty well.

At the end of the party, we exchanged gifts because the point of the party was to celebrate them turning one. We decided on a book exchange, and these two sat in my lap, without prompting, as I read them Milo's new book. We gave Milo his book, so Emma already knew it and loved it. Like their matching head bruises? Ugh. Emma's gigantic bruise is a story for another time.

Next year, we'll have two new Bradley babies. Two of the couples are expecting again! For the record, although my funny hubby likes to freak people out by telling them we're one of the couples, we're not ;)