Carly Had a Birthday!

Our baby girl turned 1 this month!  I can’t believe it has already been a year.  Time sure flies by!

We were still on vacation visiting family when she turned one so we quickly threw a party together for her.  I didn’t do much planning for the party (busy making these for the wedding) so luckily my sister-in-law who has 5 kids had plenty of cute birthday stuff for us to use.

Since there were lots of cousins (of all ages) there to celebrate with Carly we decided to have the party at a splash park and it was perfect!

We didn’t have a lot of time but I wanted her first cupcake to be delicious so I quickly threw these together.  I wasn’t too impressed with the new recipe I used for the cake (it was light and moist but fell apart too easily) but I used the same frosting as in my Better Than Anything Cupcakes and everyone loved it!  Carly included!

If you haven’t already learned, cooking in a kitchen that is not your own is hard!  I didn’t have all my usual tools so I had to do some improvising– no piping bags or tips so I just scooped all the icing in a large Zip-Lock baggie, cut off the tip, and then pipped it on.  Not perfect but it did the job.

Her first taste was just a little nibble of the frosting.  You can see she is thinking it over…

Oh yeah!  It’s good!

We then got to play in the water.  This was her first time in water other than the bath and she had a blast!

She kept trying to touch the water and catch it.  Screams & laughs= “I like this!”

Carly’s sweet cousins and aunts were so kind to spoil her with lots of gifts.  We all sat in a circle and passed each gift around one at a time while clapping and singing “Carly has a birthday!” until it reached Carly.  She LOVED it and kept a close eye on the gift as it was passed around.

This birthday party was definitely a success and made this girl happy!  She sure loved all the attention and playing with her cute cousins.

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I think every parent says this about their kid but I just have to say it too, Carly is the CUTEST!  Everything she does is seriously so cute, even if it’s crying or making a mess.  It’s funny how fast you get over spit-up and poop all over the place when it’s from you’re own adorable baby.  It’s still gross, but bearable when you see those sweet baby blue eyes and plump lips curl into a smile just for you… that makes all the cleaning and sleepless nights worth it.

One thing I love about being a mom is seeing Carly discover the world around her.  Almost everyday she is doing some new little thing.  The other day I was cleaning out a closet and let Carly play with a broken hanger and she seriously sat there for 15 minutes trying to match up the broken ends and keep them together.  I love that she is so curious… and that I don’t have to buy expensive toys to entertain her. 🙂

She’s not walking yet but she crawls all around.  And when I say crawl, I mean move like a seal.  She refuses to put her knees up under her (oh, we have tried to push them up under her, believe me).  While it would be fun to see her walking by now I’m actually glad that she isn’t that mobile yet and destroying everything.

MORE ABOUT CARLY:

• She is a talker and loves to babble.  The sound of her voice just makes our hearts melt.
• She points all the time!  Sometimes she just gets excited, points, and then looks at where she is pointing.  The other day she did that in public and she got someone to look at where she was pointing.  So funny!
• She has become a great sleeper- 12 hours a night and she takes a two hour nap twice a day.
• She loves her baby dolls and “baby” is actually her first word.  She says it as “day-dee”.  She talks to her babies and gives them hugs and kisses.  It’s so sweet!
• She eats almost anything.  Some of her favorite foods recently have been strawberries, raspberries, grilled cheese sandwiches, avocado, bananas…
• She LOVES going outside.  Every time we go out our apartment door she squeals with excitement.
• She has mommyitis.
• Have something shiny and metal?  She’ll touch it and then stick in her mouth.
• She likes to wave and kiss her reflection in the mirror as well as see pictures and videos of babies.
• She waves all the time to say hi, bye, and goodnight.  She will even wave to strangers if they don’t look too scary.

We just love this little girl to pieces!  So grateful she is in our lives and we are excited to see her continue to grow and learn.