A very belated birthday post

This is my very belated birthday post - Annie's birthday was over two weeks ago. Annie had a fantastic birthday and birthday weekend. Thanks to everyone who helped with that!

My sister's in-laws have a cute tradition of decorating the kitchen table on people's birthdays. They decorate with pictures and the cake and the presents, and things the person likes. I think it's a cute tradition, so here's a picture of Annie's birthday table.

We had my sister's family and my parents come over for a pancake breakfast. Annie loved the pancakes! She also loved all the attention and opening some cute presents.

After we'd gotten ready, we went over to singing time at the library, which is one of Annie's favorite activities. In the afternoon we went up to Brad's parents and had dinner and the bear cake. We let her have her own huge piece. She started off gingerly taking a piece here and a piece there, but by the end she had it everywhere. I think she liked the fact that everyone was watching her even more than she liked the cake. There will be more pictures on this to follow. We forgot our camera for that, so I still have to get some pictures from my sister-in-law.

Then on Sunday we had a big family dinner and birthday celebration with my family for all the March birthdays. Annie had her own piece of cake at this party too. She followed the same pattern on this piece.

I'd say her first birthday was a major success. :)

Every day she's getting more skills and figuring out more things. I love it! She is at such a fun, inquisitive stage.

She LOVES singing. She does the actions to the Jumbo Elephant and There Was a Little House songs really well. Every time we ask her if she wants to sing a song, she starts waving her arm like we do in the Jumbo Elephant song. She's really good with her fine motor skills (like doing all the actions to songs), not so much with her gross motor skills (like walking). She also loves to dance. Brad's parents are letting us borrow a clavinova that plays songs. Claire and Susie (her cousins who live upstairs) found this out and love to come down and dance. She watched them and now she pulls herself up on the piano bench and bounces her knees up and down so that her little bum shakes. I ADORE it! She can imitate (and I think understands) "all done". She says "Ba Ba Ba" for "bear" (because we always call it a bear bear bear - it's from a song). She says moo for the cow, clicks her tongue for the chicken, and puts her finger over her lips for the bunny. On a good day she'll say woof for the dog. She loves to wave bye bye and claps anytime anyone cheers. She loves to give daddy hugs and mommy and her bear wide, open mouth kisses. She is SUCH a pleasant little girl - usually even when she's tired or hungry. Brad and I feel so lucky to be her parents!

Let them eat cake

In the week leading up to Annie's birthday, I had several failed attempts at cake making. My first failed attempt was with a triple (really quadruple) chocolate fudge cake. If you've never had one, email me or comment for the recipe - it's divine. It's a chocolate bunt cake with a chocolate pudding package in the mix, chocolate chips, and chocolate frosting drizzled on the top. Yum! I've made several successful triple chocolate cake before, but it was not meant to be on this go around. I had volunteered to bring a bunt cake to a RS birthday celebration that I wasn't even going to be able to attend. (My first day of work was the next day. If you didn't know, I now work one day a week at Baby Watch working on an autism screening program for kids in early intervention. It's great.) I mixed up the batter and put it in the pan only to realize that I'd forgotten to mix in the pudding packet. I should have just dumped it all back in my mixer, but I'd just cleaned it so I didn't really want to. I decided I could just mix it in while it was in the pan. Unfortunately this meant that the Pam got mixed in as well and was no longer coating the sides of the pans. When I went to dump it out an hour later, it came out in three huge chunks. So I gave the cake to my nieces and nephews for their after school treat the next day.

Cake failure #2 was even worse. I really wanted to make a bunny cake for one of Annie's parties and a bear cake for the other. I started with the bunny cake. This required that I make two 9-in round cakes and freeze them to cut them out into cute little bunny shapes. I REALLY wanted this to be a cute cake because this was the one I was going to take to my in-laws and I wanted to impress them. :) I know it's bad, but who can help it? As I was getting the first cake out of the oven, I dropped it!!! I don't think I've ever just dropped a cake in my life. This left me with just one round cake from which to make a bunny. My sister and I ate half of it and left the rest for my nieces and nephews after school snack. (My nephew asked his mom why I never made frosting for my broken cakes.)

Cake success #1 was Annie's birthday bear cake (consequently you can guess which cake I took to my in-laws). There were no droppings, no messing up the recipes, no burnings. It just turned out cute. I was pretty darn pleased with it.

P.S. I turned the one round cake into two bunny heads and ears for Annie and her cousin Grace who is just one week younger to eat at another family birthday party, so all's well that ends well, eh?