Emily's Birthday Party

We had so much fun celebrating Emily's birthday on Saturday! It was so nice to have Barb and Cameron in town and we're already missing them. Emily got spoiled with all of her fun presents! She got lots of clothes and books and puzzles and she loved them all. But her favorite gift was her new toy car from Grandma Barb. She has Grant push her around on it and he gets going pretty fast. She is just giddy when she gets the chance to ride on her car and she gets upset when he gets too tired and has to stop. I guess the toy is going to be great for her and a lot of work for us! Thanks Grandma Barb!! She loved her cupcake. It was more fun for her than the cake because she could hold it more easily. She still tried to get the frosting off of her fingers though. She realized that licking them worked the best :) Thanks to everyone who helped but this fun party together and to everyone who came!

twelve months

Why is this happening to me? Is this real life? How in the world is my baby 1? I'm so not ready for this! 

Emily's had a great birthday so far! She started the day with mommy and daddy getting her out of bed with the happy birthday song. We've decided to start a tradition of the kids waking up with balloons corresponding with their age. So today she had 1 balloon. She thought it was pretty neat!

At breakfast, daddy snuck her some fruit loops and she loved them! Then she tried her very first ice cream cone at lunch! She was all for it! She was trying to suck it rather than lick it :)

Em has had so much fun with her Grandma Barb and Uncle Cameron in town! She's getting spoiled with all of the attention and lots of different people to play with! We're so glad they're here!

Emily is just more fun and more smart and more full of personality each and every day! She's always making us laugh and she seriously cracks herself up. She totally knows when she's being silly or cute. She likes to be cute sometimes by cocking her head to the side and giving a really sweet smile. Sometimes she even says "aww" when she knows she's being cute or giving kisses. 

cocking her head :) she usually has a really sweet smile to go with it

Emily has gotten really good at entertaining herself. She loves making up new games. I love watching her and seeing what sorts of things she comes up with as her little imagination shows through. She can turn anything into a game! Her newest thing happened when Barb and Cameron were here. We were trying to barricade her in the living room with the car seat blocking her exit. She tried to get past it several ways, but it eventually turned into a game of her climbing into the car seat, standing up in it or rocking herself in it, then finding a new way to get out. Then she'd start the whole process over again. This entertained her for a long time yesterday!

She still LOVES to dance. I have disney music playing a lot around the house, especially when I'm cooking dinner. Whenever she hears music she'll find some way to dance to it.  If she's sitting, she'll rock her head back and forth or shrug her shoulders up and down. If she's crawling around, she'll stop and shake her booty in the air. It's hilarious!

Emily's an awesome eater! Even though she's on the skinny side, no one can accuse us of not feeding her enough because she eats like a champ! And she still likes most things. She loves fruit, and especially veggies! I can give her mixed veggies for dinner and she'll down the whole thing! But she also loves bread, cheese, yogurt, chicken, meatballs... pretty much anything we throw at her. And now we know that she really likes cake and ice cream too! She only nurses once a day now and that will stop pretty soon as well. While it's a lot more convenient, it's a little bit bittersweet having to end that stage with her. 

It breaks my heart to see how fast she's grown. I've loved every stage with her, but I miss so much the stages we've left behind. And it hurts to know I won't have them back :( But, as I said before, she just gets more and more fun every day so I know I just need to enjoy each moment and eat it up. We love her so much! My mom has always told me that when you have kids you can remember your life before they were born, but you can't remember ever not loving them. That's exactly how I feel! I can't remember a world where I didn't have love for this little one! I've come to know that the love a mother has for her child is incomparable to anything else in the world! I'm so grateful for Emily and that she came into our world a year ago today! She's blessed our lives so much and we look forward to continuing to watch her grow and learn!

Happy birthday sweet girl!

outtakes:

1st birthday photoshoot

I can't believe it's almost Emily's birthday!! We took Emily's first birthday pics and did her smash cake yesterday. She was a little bit of a grumps all day long so it was a lot of work and it's a miracle we were able to get any good pictures! But, we pushed through it and out of the tons and tons of pictures we took, we did end up with some cuties.  She really liked the cake, but she didn't like the way the frosting felt on her fingers so she didn't dig into it too much.  We had fun, amidst all of the fussing :)