But wait - she's still not even crawling, let alone walking. (Following in her brothers' footsteps. So to speak.) So I guess I can have my baby for a little longer.
The day started with a very special birthday breakfast: baked chocolate/banana oatmeal. Super yummy!
Okay, confession time: I actually made this oatmeal more for Josh than for Tess. Josh has been on a real anti-oatmeal kick lately, which is too bad because we eat it 3 times a week. I thought for sure the chocolate banana would be a hit. To his credit, the boy did try it out. But then decided he didn't like it. Oh well. I guess he's just gonna have to either learn to like oatmeal again or learn how to live on an empty stomach in the mornings! Anywho, Tess sure seemed to like it!
Now, on to the cake.
I just had a thought. Thirty years from now my children are gonna wonder why I make such a big deal about their birthday cakes on my blog. Seriously, it's just a cake. I answer with this: when you put that much time, effort, and butter into something, it's necessary to blog about it. I know these are not professional cakes by any stretch of the imagination, but just try to understand the amount of effort it took me to get them to look halfway decent!
Anywho, this year I wanted a very, very girly cake because we have never had a very, very girly cake in our house before. I tried to do a pink ombre rosette kind of thing, and while it's not quite how I imagined it in my head, it's not so bad, either.
I made two batches of frosting and that was barely enough to cover the cake. Needless to say, the boys were in heaven eating their frosting with a little bit of cake attached...
I had to protect the cake from Cole all day long. He kept hovering around the kitchen saying "Cole's happy birthday cake. I want!"
Today was much like any other, which is perfect when you're one year old. After Tess's nap I put her and the boys outside to play. I told Spencer to push her on the swing, but, surprisingly, Cole took over that job. (Cole has not always been Tess's biggest fan, but he's been warming up to her recently. Just last week at aerobics he chased some other kids away from Tess because, as he yelled at them, "MY BABY!! COLE'S BABY!" He also frequently gets worried that I'm going to leave Tess at home or at the store or wherever. "No! Don't leave Tess! Tess, Tess, TESS!!!" You know, because I leave my children all over the place all of the time.)
I just love this shot of the two of them!
Tess looks a little scared here, but truly, she was lovin' it!
For all of our other children's first birthdays we have gone out to dinner. This is because I always felt that I shouldn't have to cook since it was really me doing all the work the year before; therefore, I should get a night off from making dinner. But we never had a 2 year old Cole before this. That child... well, he's no fun at restaurants right now. So we decided to feed the kids macaroni and cheese (a collective favorite) and Lance picked up a couple of burritos for the adults (Welcome to Moe's!).
As you can see, mac and cheese is a big hit with the one year old set. Omigoodness, I love the darling look on her face!
I was dying over the fact that she had to hold one of her balloons while eating. Just look at those cute, chubby little hands.
Spencer and Josh demanded a picture with the birthday girl. The birthday girl demanded a bottle.
Time to sing Happy Birthday!
At this point I usually post a video, but for whatever reason my videos are in some sort of funky format that I can't seem to fix and our resident IT Genius is out playing basketball. So, no video. Just try to picture in your head all of us singing as Tess looks at us and the cake as if we are all psychos. Then Lance tries to get Tess to touch the cake, but she will have none of it. (Probably because she heard me yelling at Cole all day to stay away from it.) Then Lance sticks a glob of frosting into her mouth and she decides that the cake is really not all that bad and deserves further investigation.
Unfortunately, I let Tess fill up on mac and cheese, so she wasn't that interested in eating cake. This is a TRAVESTY, because my very favorite thing about first birthdays is letting the baby go to town on the cake and getting all messy. Tess was already quite messy from the mac and cheese, but mac and cheese mess is not quite as endearing as first birthday cake mess. So maybe I will let Tess have cake for dinner tomorrow and get some good pictures from that.
I think she takes after her mother. (In looks, not in cake-eating.)
I let the boys each open one present for Tess. They were more than happy to oblige.
Tess was not so happy about this. Actually, Tess knew it was bath time and was not so happy about having to wait for it.
Tess got a Fisher Price Little People's doll house, complete with door bell that works and potty that makes flushing noises! (These were the most exciting features for the boys.) It also came with the Little Peoples SUV and a set of Grandparent figures. My good friend, Misty, got a great deal on this and accidentally ordered two; I was only too willing to take it off her hands for her. (Thanks again, Misty!)
Kind of random sidenote: I thought I had chocolate cake mix in my basement storage room. I kinda feel like all first birthday cakes should be chocolate because that makes for a more interesting mess on the baby. However, when I went downstairs yesterday to get the cake mix all I could find was the $.49 Spring Cake Confetti mix I had bought on clearance at Aldi last week. (What I thought was chocolate cake was a brownie mix. Dang!) So I used that instead. Oh sure, I could have made a chocolate cake from scratch. But I didn't wanna.
So anyways, sprinkles. In the cake. It was a hit.
Since Tess is only one year old and the fourth child, and since I had already scored the doll house, I didn't really feel like the boys needed to buy her any toys. So I talked them into buying some balloons for her instead. They were only too happy to oblige.
She loves them and so do the boys. Can you tell they picked out the color scheme? (It was one of those moments where I really wanted to step in and say "Hey, let's pick some colors that actually match!", but I bit my tongue and let them choose what they wanted, because does it really matter? No. But do those non-matching balloons really bug me? You betcha.)
After her bath, Tess finally got to play with her new toys. Of course, she had to fight with Cole for the chance. But that was pretty much a given.
"Oh hey - there's my tummy!"
I couldn't get her to look up for a single picture.
Guess that means she likes the doll house. Score!
A few things about Tess right now that I love:
- Whenever I take her bib off after a meal she always has to grab one more thing off of her tray and gobble it down, even if she's full. (Because you can never tell when you'll be fed again, right, Tess?)
- Tess claps with her feet when she's really excited. It is super awesome, but she won't do it for the camera of course.
- When Lance comes home Tess lights up and says in a baby way "Oh, Hi! There you are! I wondered when you'd get here!" She likes her daddy.
- She still likes her mommy more. And I'm good with that, because I know there will be a day when she won't.
- Tess always sticks her feet strait up into the air when you put her in her crib. I put the blanket over her face, and she kicks it down and snuggles in for a nap.
- Tess is not afraid to let anyone know when she is upset. Ever.
- As I mentioned, she's still not crawling. But that doesn't mean she's not mobile: she scoots around on her bum or on her back. She's quite pleased with this.
- Tess claps whenever she hears applause on the TV.
- She still doesn't smile at many people - she stares them down. It's like she's trying to figure them out; you can almost hear the gears in her head turning!
- Tess lurves when I wear jewelery - especially necklaces. The chunkier and easier to grab, the better. She'll use her chubby little hands to move my head from side to side to check out my earrings, too.
- She gets so excited when I come to get her out of the crib. She does a whole body bounce that's pretty funny.
- Tess still has crazy fuzzy hair on the back of her head because she's always rubbing it against her bed and the floor. It sticks up everywhere and looks as if she has put her finger in a socket. I'm always fighting a losing battle to keep it down.
- She already preens in the mirror when I comb her hair or put a necklace on her. Love it.
1 comment:
Absolutely the most beautiful cake ever! I love it!
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