First Birthday Event

Before I had a child, I was one of those people that said "If I ever have kids, I am not having a big birthday party with a bunch of people. It's overwhelming for the child, especially when they're really little."

And then I had a little girl who I want to shower with all the love and gifts in the world. And how could I not throw a birthday party in her honor? So, I started planning Molly Ruth's first birthday right after Christmas. Seriously. My inspiration came from a smocked dress with sweet little zoo animals on it. Our theme was zoo animals, but in sweet pastels (not a zoo safari theme). I found party supplies (cups, plates, napkins,etc.) online in the color theme I wanted on Birthday Direct's website.

Naturally, we wanted to invite all of our family, friends, and neighbors, which totaled 35 or so invitations. A little bit more than the 10-15 invitations I had originally imagined. When we went to the post office to pick out the stamps for the invitations, I asked the lady working there how many stamps were on a sheet. She answered with "25." And after pausing to think for a second, I said "Ok, we'll need two sheets then." To which she replied, "Oh, so you're having a first birthay event."

So, we had a wonderful first birthday event for Miss Molly Ruth on the Saturday after her birthday...

Regretfully, I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because I was so busy making sure all the decorations were just right and visiting with our guests. I think that next year I will designate someone with photography skills as the official photographer so I can make sure to have plenty of pictures! This was the only picture I got of the full tablescape...

We had pink ribbon streamers hanging off of the chandelier that were anchored with different white zoo animals. I found the zoo animals in the $1 bin at Target and had Matt spray paint them white. Cheap, easy, and oh so cute!

Her birthday cake had a monkey on top with little pink glasses on. Then, each tier had silhouettes of the animals that were on the plates and napkins. And let me tell you, the cake tasted even better than it looked, if you can believe it! We used a local bakery called 'Tis So Sweet and I highly recommend them if you are in the Spring Hill area.

The picture above is MR with our good friends Tali and Will. Thank you Tali for MR's Build-A-Bear named Jewel (that had its own pair of glasses!) So sweet and thoughtful.

I can't get enough of those little curls!

Now that I'm a stay at home mom, I've put pressure on myself to be more crafty. So, I made most of the birthday decorations. I loved how this picture display of the first year of her life turned out:

I also made a ribbon skirt for her highchair (I got the idea from Pinterest and saw a similar one for sale on Etsy for $30!) It cost around $5 for me to make mine and it turned out great!

Below are my Auntie KK (who looks thrilled to be having her picture taken, might I add), Grandma Marsh (who Molly calls "Maaaaa"), and my cousin Allie (who is MR's godmother).

Here are Matt and Molly with our niece, Sara, and her brand new baby boy, Mason:

My sweet cousin, Sarah, holding my sweet niece, Mallie Kate.

Molly Ruth had a blast opening presents..

and enjoyed the attention as we sang to her...

She was a little apprehensive to dig into her smash cake...

but caught on pretty quickly!

More family pics with cousin Tara (expecting a baby girl in May) and her husband, Jeff, Paul and Hil and Mallie Kate, and us...

Lastly, here are the party favors:

A local lady made these and the detail on them was amazing. They also tasted reeeeally good.

Thank you to everyone who came out and celebrated with us! It meant so much to us and we look forward to the next birthday event! :)

Best Year Ever

On March 7th, our litte Molly Ruth turned the big ONE! It is so hard to believe that our fragile newborn has blossomed into a sturdy toddler, seemingly overnight.

At the age of one, Molly Ruth:

- Has 7 teeth. Four on top and three on bottom.
- Has curly blondish brown hair. (Yay for curls!)
- Crawls and walks along furniture, but hasn't started walking independently yet.
- Sleeps 12-13 hours each night and takes one nap (which varies from 1-2 hours) during the day.
- Loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We don't watch too much TV but she gets so excited when they do the "Hot Dog" dance that I can't resist!
- Wears glasses with a prescription of +4.5 and +4.0. She has a blue pair and a pink pair.
- Says mama, dada, baba, dog, moo, no (which comes out do most of the time)
- Can point to hair, nose, toes, light (her favorite!), cow, and dog
- Still takes 4 6 oz bottles a day, but with 3 meals in between. Meals consist of baby food, yogurt, and/or grown up food. She really likes fish!
- Wears a size 5 diaper, 12-18 month clothing, and size 4 shoe. We go to her 1 year well visit appointment in a couple of weeks so I'll know her exact height and weight then.
- Makes us laugh all the time. Molly is so funny and silly. She is constantly making silly faces, loud squeals and screams, and bouncing and gyrating out of delight.

This journey into parenthood over the past year has been, undoubtedly, our best year ever. I love being a parent more than I ever imagined and I love having Matt as my parenting partner. It's scary and challenging at times, but mostly, it's a whole lot of fun.

With that, I'd like to share what we did on Molly Ruth's birthday.

On her birthday morning, we walked into her room singing happy birthday and gave her a special birthday balloon (which she loved!)

We then had a special birthday breakfast of pancakes and eggs! She loved the eggs but the pancakes...not so much. Molly Ruth's pancakes were in a special shape and she used the plate that was daddy's when he was a little boy...

Notice the little fingers reaching for the plate. "Mom, quit taking pictures of my food and let me eat!"

During the day she played and napped as usual, but that evening we had some cake and opened a few presents. It's our little family tradition to have a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake on your actual birthday, so, in Scott birthday tradition, she had her very first ice cream cake with World Class Chocolate ice cream and white cake.

Those previous two pictures were taken while we were singing to her. The face in that last picture has become her "signature" Molly Ruth face. She does it when she's happy, excited, or surprised. Like I said, she's pretty funny.

She was pretty excited that she got to touch the cake but it was hard for her to dig into it since it was still frozen (but don't worry, she got to experience the messiness of a smash cake on her party day).

This girl loves her ice cream. And opening presents...

Cousin Joan was visiting and was sweet enough to give Molly a fun book called Peek-A-Moo. It goes through all of the animals and says the corresponding sound each makes, after unfolding each page. Very cute and interactive for a toddler! Thank you Joan :)

And finally, a little gift from mommy and daddy.

Happy First Birthday, baby girl. Thank you for giving us indescribable joy and abundant laughter every day. Our cups runneth over.

PS Pictures from her birthday party will be up soon. Promise!