Lots to say...

And no good words to say it.

Hannah's first birthday on Saturday. She survived to one. This is pretty surprising, at least to me. Both in that typical new-mom "Oh god, something's going to happen to her" and in that not-so-typical (or maybe it is, I don't know) "give me one good reason not to throw you out the window" kind of way.

The party was good. Lots of people there to help us celebrate. One thing is certain, Hannah has a LOT of people in this world who love her. Especially when you realize there was no family at this party (that's this coming weekend) and there were still 20 people there.

I missed most of the cake smashing, because I was busy adjudicating over the cake division, and who got a corner piece (which of course, has more frosting) which makes me a little sad. It's so typical of me... to get all involved in "doing" that I miss the moments that are "living". But I didn't miss it completely, and she was very cute with cake all smushed on her face and in her hair. She covered Daddy in cake, there was cake on the wall, you get the pictures. I'll post a few of the pictures up here later.
Wiley bought her a mylar Pooh balloon, which she loved. We ended up grinning it through her pants leg, so everywhere she went on Saturday, she was followed by the little balloon. It made for good baby tracking in the crowd. Every time I turned around, there was someone else holding her, or playing with her, and she really seemed to like it once she got used to having all those people around.

She got lots of presents... cute outfits (including one dress handmade by gala) and lots of lovely noisy toys, including a piano that she thinks is wonderful, and a hammer and pounding bench, which intrigues her greatly.

She was so wired by the excitement and the sugar that she didn't crash out asleep until almost 10:00 on Saturday night. It was an overwhelming day. And I'm now the mommy of a one year old. Wacky.

Further baby notes

Hannah has broken through her third tooth, quite possibly on her birthday. That's when I noticed the little nub sticking out through her gums, at least. She continues to be wildly shy about the teething process, and refuses to let us in to see.

She had her first go at spaghetti and meatballs (yes, made from scratch) yesterday, and she LOVED it. Ate the whole bowl I'd made up for her, begged for more tastes of sauce of my fingers, the whole works. So today, I made up little Hannah freezer meals with the sauce I didn't put in the freezer for us. This'll make it so that imagine77 or scirocco can just pop one out, nuke it, and have a ready made meal for little miss. She went after the "real" food with such gusto, I'm really wondering if part of her fighting at mealtimes is an expression of not wanting to eat mushy baby food anymore. Which makes life more difficult, since I can't ask Elisa to cook entire meals for her. And the little Stage three meal packs are more expensive, and well, not as good as I'd like Hannah to have... I want her to get used to home cooked meals, not the baby food equivalent of Spaghettios. I see a lot of freezer meal packing in my future. And I think it's time to implement family dinner time on the nights I don't work, so she can start seeing table manners and whatnot. This will be interesting.

She's so funny sometimes, she just makes me laugh. One of her favorite things in the world is to watch me walk up and down the stairs. But only if she's above me, being carried by someone else. To the point of, if Daddy is holding her, and I start walking towards the stairs, she starts shrieking her little baby anticipation yells and bouncing up and down... before I've even gone down a step. It's becoming a ritual. I invent reasons to follow her and Daddy up the stairs when they're going, and I can't take a trip to the upstairs without a baby escort these days. Its worth it for that crazed little giggle, though.

Because I can't pick just one of these...

I'll torture you all with multiple cake smooshing pictures.

But I'll cut them, so you can avoid the torture if you want.

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