Annie's First Birthday!

We had a truly wonderful day yesterday, celebrating Annie's birthday.  Toby and I truly indulged by taking the day off work and spending the whole day with Annie.  We went to the park THREE times, Skyped with our English family, tried twice to get Annie to eat cake, had family photos taken by a photographer, had lunch with my parents, took a nap, and finally crashed on the couch with pizza and tv.  It was a really great day.  I only cried once about Annie's transition to toddlerhood.

Below are a few photographic highlights.  I'll post the professional photos when we have them back.  My expectations are low, since Annie didn't really want to perform on her birthday.

Speaking of non-performance, Annie completely refused to touch her cake, much less eat it.  She really only touched it when trying to push it off her tray.  Hence, you will note a lack of cute-baby-with-cake-rubbed-all-over-her-face photos. 

Here we are, setting out for the first trip to the park - with Annie on her brand new SmartTrike.  She loved it!  She laughed and laughed the whole way.  It was such a trip!

This is the cake.  I promise it was really tasty and took quite a while to make. Don't look to close, I am far from a professional. I hear that each year you are a mom, your decorating skills improve.  

This is our second attempt to get Annie to try her cake.  Ain't happenin'.

We don't have any photos of Annie is the cute dresses she wore most of the day, but hopefully the professional photographs will come through.  These last photos are from our last trip to the park of the day.  Annie doesn't particularly care for walking in shoes, or on grass, or on the grass while wearing shoes.  She stood there under that tree for a rather long time until I rescued her. :)

   

 And now, giving her very stern face and pointing toward her intended destination - the playground.

Annie is really into slides these days.  She loved going down big slide with her daddy -

And the smaller slide - nearly all by herself.  Look at that face!!!

I hope she had as great a day as did Toby and I.  It was an awesome bookend to an awesome year.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow Annie turns 1, which is just unbelievable.  It's also unbelievable that exactly one year ago I was timing contractions and calling Toby to tell him I thought I might be in labor.  I still remember the sound of his voice, though not exactly what he said.  It had a very distinct "holy heck this is really happening and I suddenly have a lot of adrenaline in my veins but I must stay calm" sound.

Then I billed six hours of work.  I should have gotten extra credit and/or automatic partnership for that.

Anyway, I also remember realizing that I had already had the last good night sleep I was going to get for a long time.  That was kind of a bummer.  I would have savored it a bit more or slept in a lot later if I had known.  It was good that I didn't realize how long it would be before she slept through the night reliably.  

Sometimes it feels like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like a lifetime since Annie joined our little family.  It makes me a little sad that she won't really be my little baby anymore after tomorrow.  Then I realize that she's walking, communicating, playing on playgrounds, dancing to music, catching balls thrown by daddy and lots of things that signify that she hasn't been a little baby in a while, she's a toddler.  A very independent, funny little girl, really.  And the cutest little girl I know. :)

Toby is a toy maker!

Toby spent many many hours working on the perfect gift for Annie's first birthday.  When he finished it earlier this week, he was too excited to wait to give it to her.  So don't worry about spilling the beans to Annie. 

She absolutely loves it!  Whenever I try to carry her past it, she tries to lunge out of my arms.  I don't have any pictures on the computer of her actually playing with it, but here 'tis...

It is a giant play cube with tons of fun activities.  The top has a bead chaser and stacking blocks.  One side has a chalkboard and a drawer for chalk.  She loooves chalk, but I'm afraid it has to go bye-bye for a while until she stops drawing on every surface in the house. For now she keeps our old cell phones in her drawer. 

Another side has a very cool painting with four figures that she can move around on tracks.  There is a closer
shot of this side below.

The third side has an abacus and blocks that spin around. The fourth side (also know as Annie's favorite side) has a shape sorter.  The best part is that the shapes fall into a cabinet and Annie can open and close (and open and close, open and close, open and close) the door all day long.   The cube is also on wheels, which is great since Annie loves to push stuff around, like her high chair, her crib at school, and anything else on wheels.

Here's a close up of Toby's painting and the figures on the tracks.  I think you can tell, but just in case you can't, those are a cardinal in the sky, surgeonfish in the sea, shetland pony in the meadow and butterfly in the flowers. I had no idea that Toby could paint so well! He is so creative - I hope Annie inherits that from him.

Toby had a lot of fun making this, and even got to buy some new power tools.  Win-win! Well done, Toby!

More England photos

I'm pretty sure that I am setting a record in length of time between going on a wonderful trip and updating the blog to reflect said trip.  These photos are really in no particular order, and sorry Autumn, I am still not featured in any of these. I hear there is a wedding video somewhere that will provide evidence that I actually did attend this trip to England. However, since I made a blubbering fool of myself on said video, you won't be seeing it.  Anyway...

Annie and Millie really hit it off - it was so cute watching them play, well, near each other.  I think in a few more months they might actually play together, but as babies - not so much.   They enjoyed some group bathing, complete with lots of new bath toys, courtesy of Nana and Grumps.

Toby got everything he ever wanted for Christmas, including pjs that match Annie!  He would be embarrassed if I published how many times he has worn that thing since Santa brought it...

Toby and James are so funny when they are strolling with the babes.  Our short walk was above-average on the hi-jinks scale.

Here's Annie and Grannie having a snuggle.  Annie has a face full of yogurt, which was her favorite English food.  They have fabulous baby yogurt.

Annie also enjoyed pinching Millie's toys.  Millie was very sweet to share - much sweeter than I expect Annie would have been had the situations been reversed.

We had a really lovely (but cold, Garrod, really cold) picnic in the North Yorkshire Moors.  Annie could not figure out why we were eating sausages off a grill in the middle of nowhere, but I knew why.  Grumps is determined to instill a sense of adventure in his granddaughters, that is for darn sure. :) The drive was among the best England has to offer - tiny roads, lots of sheep, Krista with her eyes shut in the back seat.

Next, tied for first place in the "tired but so cute" category - Millie and Annie, individually and also in the group competition. Happy Christmas!