The ONE Rose

Happy Birthday to our sweet little Rose! The big day was yesterday. I can’t believe my SECOND baby is a whole year old. How’d that happen so fast? I get kind of nostalgic and a tad emotional on my kids’ birthdays. I divided this long post into 2 parts: past and present. [By the way, I am not ashamed that there are at least 25 pictures on this post. After all, I never said I could restrain myself with cute faces and a camera...]

Part I: The Past

The happy birthday girl in her birthday clothes. I just love her so much, it makes my heart happy to see her growing and learning but my heart also aches a little when I see how she’s growing up so fast. Parenthood is emotional business.

Birth Day.

One month old, the day she was blessed.

Two months old

Three months old

Four months

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

One year old—she didn’t love the hat I rubber banded around her neck (hence the tears).

It’s kind of the trend to say a few things about the personality and stats of the star baby. I usually get too caught up with the pictures to say a whole lot, but I’ll make an effort. Rose weighs enough for us to turn her car seat frontwards. Her feet are at least 2 inches smaller than Jay’s were at her age. I got her a pair of softy shoes back during a Labor Day sale, based on the size of Jay’s one-year-old shoes. They are HUGE on her. The people Rose loves the most are Jay, Mommy, Daddy, and Aunt Steph. Rose is a comedian. She gets this goofy grin on her face and tries to do something silly to make us laugh. She really wants to walk by herself…but she’s not quite there yet. She often pulls herself up on my legs and tries to follow me around while I’m cooking or cleaning. It’s kind of dangerous for both of us.

Part II: The [birthday] Present

Rose had a calm little birthday. We had homemade birthday hats, cake, and macaroni and cheese. We had a few presents. We had balloons. We sang to the birthday girl. We hugged her to pieces. Here’s the photographic evidence:

Just woke up on her birthday! She loves her fuzzy blanket with a bunny head on it.

When Rose woke up, Jay immediately ran to the bag where her presents were and gave her the one from him: a car (of course). We saved the other gifts till dinner time when Daddy was home.

Rose even had a few phone calls on her birthday!

Possibly one of the all around favorite parts of the day (for the kids) was when I dropped the flour tub while I was cooking. It poofed all over the place…Jay and Rose were directly in the line of fire, since they prefer to sit and play at my ankles while I cook. They had a great time playing in the flour. Jay even pushed it all under the fridge to clean it up for me.

Birthday dinner: real mac n cheese! Both Jay and Rose absolutely adore this stuff. In fact, Rose didn’t really want her cupcake because she was so full of macaroni!

Favorite.

We had some cake too! I made 2 cupcakes and then put the rest of the batter into a pan because I hate making and frosting cupcakes. I made a sour cream pound cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting because plain old cake isn’t very yummy to us (in my opinion, when it comes to dessert, the more butter and cream, the better). Jay’s and Rose’s cupcakes had whipped cream on top because they love it so much and it’s a little  less sugary than chocolate frosting. Not that cake should be healthy, but I thought they’d like it better that way. You know.

Birthday hats!

After dinner (and a bath), Jay opened Rose’s presents for her. He gave her 2 cars, and she also go some clothes and sunglasses. I can’t decide who loves the Hotwheels more—Jay or Rose…

Then the Birthday Girl requested a story. And then she went to bed.

Rose loves her new sunglasses and Hotwheels. I love her new jeggings. A few notes about the video: Jay has been requesting violin music, so that’s the Mozart in the background. And Rose has sort of started saying thank you when we hand her something. You can barely hear her say it at the end of the video.

Happy birthday to my cool daughter!