A year in the making

It was the beginning of October and I was talking to a colleague about her daughter's first birthday, neither one of us had started party planning yet (other mom's were already planning parties for after the first of the year) and we were saying we better get on the ball. While I wanted to have something nice that I would remember I wasn't going  overboard for a 1st birthday. Cute invitations for the baby book, a birthday banner and an awesome cake were on my list of must haves for the party. I thought about what she likes and what helped to shape this last year and there was a clear front runner for her party theme...Baby Einstein's! To this day she still gets this smile on her face every time the caterpillar comes across the screen. I put Aunt F to work on Pintresting (I still don't have an account) ideas and from there the party started to take shape. Mommy made the invitations, Aunt F made the cute highchair skirt when they were visiting, Grandma made Brasilian treats like the caterpillar and Aunt H made the banners and cake.

 

J's been a year for a week now, I still can't fathom that she is one. My mother's internal alarm clock woke me up at 4am on her birthday. I tossed and turned in bed, turned my alarm clock off (yes I set it) and went into J at 4:13am to wish her a happy birthday as she lay there peacefully sleeping. Of course I shed a few tears and then had no trouble going back to bed! We spent that morning getting ready for her party, our family that was in town visiting and our Dallas family was the perfect size for her party. Just enough commotion to rock mommy's nerves but not enough to rock J's! We took our last round of monthly sticker photos (the subject was not very cooperative) and then put them away, more to add to the baby book. In all the day flew by just like the year and my house looked like a mini Toys R Us. Time to put some of the baby toys away and start playing with the big girl toys. To the start of our Chapter 3...

Here are all the pictures from her birthday (to include the smash cake pictures from the week before).