Ashley’s first birthday party

H’okay! So. Ashley had her first birthday party yesterday! So glad I picked 3pm as the start time because I was run off my feet all day and was only just ready when people started showing up!

I had to decorate Ashley’s cake that I had baked the day before. I made a sponge cake (that wasn’t right but it was still pretty decent cake) so I chopped that up into appropriate sized pieces to make a giant 1. Made a quick chocolate icing (so much powdered sugar that I had to go buy more! So glad we live next to a store. Cocoa powder, and water. BAM!) to dunk the pieces in (don’t think I made it thin enough, but who cares!) and then rolled the pieces around in coconut. Can’t find desicated coconut which is standard so I have to use longer sweeter moister pieces. I had one piece left over because my plate wasn’t as big as I thought, so we split that and ate it as a pre-lunch.

I cleaned. I cleaned so much.

I decorated. There are balloons and streamers in all the corners of the lounge room, as well as streamers hanging from the sides of the doorways. It was fun because I had to climb on furniture to get to the corners, I don’t get to misbehave like that anymore so yay!

I set out snacks. We had a half-eaten bag of Doritos so we put those in a bowl, and bought 2 kinds of hummus to go with some blue corn chips that were FREAKIN YUMMY. (Seriously. The hummus didn’t get touched much but we ended up with like… 4 chips. Oh they were so good. Successful snack procurement!)

I think I had done everything but clean up the toys that Ash had thrown EVERYWHERE when people showed up. Lisa & Matt, then Nick & Stacy followed by Kristen & Matt. Ashley LOVED the attention. She’s so cute like that. And so not like her parents.

Grandma Lisa and Aunty Kristen helped her open her presents. From Stacy & Nick she got a cute navy outfit with ladybugs, and matching pink shoes with white polkadots. Oh, and a giant caterpillar, which is just awesome. She now has 3 toy caterpillars, but the other two are the same size and are dwarfed by this new one. Pretty certain the puzzle came from them too, it has 5 shapes and big pieces with big handles so Ash is already getting good at it.

From Kristen & Matt she got a growth chart (that I must remember to put a photo in) and 3 onesies, 2 long sleeve and one short. So that’s cool, they always come in handy.

She had already gotten her birthday present from the grandparents (the shirt of which she wore to her party because it had balloons on it!) but there was a gift from Lisa’s boss that was a white tshirt with a mult-coloured star on the chest, and pink jeans/leggings.

Dinner was pizza. For some reason we got 3 large pizzas to feed 8 people, so when everyone left there was an entire pizza left! (well, almost all of the hawaiian, and 3 slices of the chicken/broccoli). Ashley just had veggies, but she loves them so she didn’t care that she was eating better than everyone else.

Jake in, what I think Nick called, his ‘infinite wisdom’, put some of the buffalo chicken/cheese dip on top of a slice of pizza. Nick, young Matt and I followed suit shortly after. Oh man, that dip on a slice of cheese pizza? SO GOOD. I was already full before that slice but I couldn’t let such a flavour opportunity pass me by. Yum.

A little while later we had the cake. Ashley had her own piece (it was so awesome that is was basically pre-cut, very simple serving!) and made a good mess of that. Such a good mess that I had to carry her carefully from the high chair to the kitchen so I could stand her in the sink to keep the entire apartment from getting covered in crumbs!

Matt had brought his tripod so we got family photos. Ashley LOVED the final noise of the camera’s timer, so both big group photos she has this super massive smile/grin. She’s the happiest of the lot. It is SO awesome.

Once the aunts and uncles left, Ash got stripped down to her diaper. I took advantage of the baby being distracted and cleaned up and took down our giant white table. we have a smaller rectangular table so I thought I should put the 70" diameter table out back and only bring it in when we need to seat 8 (well, 9 now) people at once. This way we have more room in the lounge, something much needed now that we have so many baby toys EVERYWHERE.

The giant table is currently flat on the kitchen floor, taking up a lot of space. It is there still because Ash is using it to learn how to step up and down. She’s getting there, she can get up pretty easy but getting down is a struggle. It is maybe 3 inches off the ground, but it takes learning.

Last night was pretty sucky. Ash woke up every hour until about 5, crying. Poor girl is teething. She doesn’t seem bothered by it today so that’s good. There is a lot of drool.

She had a 2 hour nap around midday, so she missed out on seeing her Daddy on his lunch break. So after we had lunch we got dressed and headed downstairs to see him. Also, I needed to grab some money so we could go get the emissions test done on the car. (all good. yay!)

The trip to the garage and back was very quick. So quick that the woman who parked next to me as I was putting Ash in her car seat when we were leaving, was still in that park. That amused me, actually.

Once we got back, Ashley and I walked to the store (well, I carried her across the crossing and through the doors, she doesn’t like walking through doors for some reason) and then we walked up and down a few aisles with her looking at everything, running back and forth. It was so very cute.

Ash is currently sitting in the middle of the table-on-the-floor, pretending to drink from her sippy cup (but instead just letting the water pour all down her front – she’s soaked!) and playing with her doll. I love watching her carry her toys around, and seek certain toys out, it is…. amazing to watch the progress.

Ugh. Bedtime. Pictures will come… eventually. I still haven’t done the stupid birthday DITL. Things like that don’t happen on busy weekends. Blah.