First Birthday

I can't believe I have a one year old. The year feels like it went by so fast but at the same time I can't even remember what life was like before Ellie. Its like she has always been with us. She is exactly everything I ever could have wanted in a daughter and she makes us so happy everyday. Because my life revolves around her pretty much everyday I have been thinking about her birthday party for probably 3 months now. I wanted to have a cute theme and cute decorations and get the perfect pictures of her smashing her cake. Well, of course things never quite turn out the way you plan. I had built up this party so much in my head there was no way it was ever going to live up to my expectations. It was stressful planning and I was worrying about all the little details when I should have just been enjoying the fact that we made it through a year of parenthood without causing any serious damage to our child. The night before I was baking cupcakes and making treats until 11:30, the wonderful husband I have just let me go on and on about how things werent looking the right way and how the white chocolate covered popcorn wasn't dyed the right pink. The next morning we woke up early to go get the pavillion at the park. I was frantically throwing everything together, while scotty was running between the house and the park transporting everything and decorating. Ellie was tired and over the party before it began. Once we got everything set up and I had gotten over the fact the things didn't look the way I had imagined we waited and waited. Everyone was late, there was bad traffic and a few people didn't make it there until everything was over. When Ellie was starting to fall apart I decided we should just do the cake and she'll taste that icing and be happy. We started to sing Happy Birthday and she looked very worried and confused. Once the song was over everyone just stared at her waiting to do anything, cousins were in her face trying to get to to touch the cake and she wasn't loving it. Then Scotty took her hand and put it in the cake. Everyone laughed and Ellie lost it. She screamed and cried and wanted out of her chair immediately. I should have known she would have hated it. I told Scotty to remind me next time to just give our one year old a piece of cake at home and take some pictures. It just wasn't worth all the stress and work! But it was good to see friends and family and the rest of the day was spent at the beach with our best friends and it couldn't have been better. Ellie past out immediately, exhausted physically and emotionally I'm sure.Ellie, I hope you don't remember all the everyone staring at you pressuring you to preform, but I hope you do remember that lots of family and friends came from all over to spend the day with you and give you lots of cute presents. You are a very loved little girl and you are the cutest kid I have ever seen.