birthday recap

First I want to thank you all for the heartfelt birthday wishes! Naia is such a social butterfly and I know she would love to bat her eyelashes at each one of you and give you her chripy "Hi!"

As for celebrating, well second children (and subsequent ones I am sure) make you simmer down and ease up on many-a-parenting thing. For Zach's first birthday we had a shindig. I cooked, I decorated, I stressed. And of course what did he care, he was ONE! We decided we are not throwing birthday parties for numero dos until she is old enough to ask for one. And even then, they will remain small and casual like we try to do with Zach.

So with all that in mind we had a small afternoon cake affair inside on a pouring rain day. 

I finished the birthday crown!  (I battled with the $@#&*(# sewing machine until 2am one night and then gave up and hand sewed the whole thing.)

I attempted to create this for our "cake".  Well I am not a from-scratch cake making kinda gal. So I bought a cake mix. But I think my mistake was buying "healthy" cake mix from Whole Foods. You know, gluten free, wheat free, yadda yadda. So I mixed it all up, separated it into bowls, added the food coloring, all according to directions. But the cake didn't rise to fill the jars, so I got little psychedelic cake hockey pucks stuck in the bottom of the jars. We made up for it with a mound of homemade whipped cream on top and these beautiful edible butterflies. (I got them at Sugar Robot, check them out, they have great stuff!)

For Naia I made organic pumpkin muffins and topped it with the homemade whipped cream. She of course did not eat any of it, but did decide to stick her entire face in it... of course!

Zach took great pleasure in showing her what a gift was and how to open them. Funny how little ones have zero instinct for this ritual. 

Frankly, she could care less about the few little things we gave her as gifts. Her favorite part was the candle and the singing. Oh yes, more please. Clap clap clap!

One year old stats:

Favorite food: mama's milk

Favorite word: Hi! (to everybody and everything including wind) and Dada!

Favorite song: Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack

Favorite book: tie between Jamberry and I Am A Bunny

Favorite animal: dog 

Favorite play thing: big brother of course!

p.s. Don't forget to enter the fabulous GIVEAWAY for Manzanita Kids! Entries will be open through Friday.