Claire's 1st Birthday Party (+Annie's 3rd)

I’m way behind on my post for Claire’s first birthday party!  We ended up celebrating the day after her actual birthday.  We had close family and some close friends over to celebrate on a late Saturday morning.  If you recall, I also planned to have Annie’s 3^rd birthday to coincide with this celebration which worked out well.  We are at the age where I feel like I can get away with combined birthdays.  Next year we will probably put the focus on Annie’s birthday and tuck Claire’s celebration into Annie’s day.  It won’t be long before they will each want their own and not a shared celebration so taking advantage of it while it doesn’t matter in their little worlds.

We were able to get Claire down for a short nap before the birthday party which worked out well to have a happy rather than cranky 1 year old.  Everyone enjoyed seeing her walk for the first time and take note to how much she has grown.  

Annie was full of energy and running around with her cousin Elijah and friend Alaina.  At this age, their little personalities can take a turn at any given moment so I wanted to keep the party festivities moving along quickly so that we had them out of the way and we could all just socialize.  So we started right away with singing Annie Happy Birthday and she ended up with purple frosted cupcakes for the party.  She is obsessed with the color purple nowadays.  And sugar.  So win-win. 

Annie is so funny.  I know how much she LOVES being celebrated.  But when the birthday song is being sung to her, she takes it so seriously and the look on her face seems so business.  Check out the video to see what I mean…

After this, we got right to gift opening.  My least favorite part because the kids are just nuts and the chaos always sends my anxiety sky high.  I really need to figure out how to make this better in the future.  Annie was in my face asking to open more and more gifts and she was ripping thru them so fast and I was trying to focus on helping Claire open hers and I felt like it just becomes a whirlwind and then I am not 100% sure what came from who in the end.  I think next year we will have one kid open at a time for my sanity and keep the other kid contained on someone’s lap.  I can only handle one kid going gift opening nuts at a time.  The girls received all sorts of fun stuff that they are loving to play with.

After gift opening, we got Claire ready for her smash cake.  Just like Annie 1^st birthday, she had zero interest in the cake; a few tastes and she was done.  I was okay with it because I really didn’t care for the mess and we had already gotten good pictures the weekend before during her 1 year old shoot.  So the cake smash was uneventful.

After this, the kids played and when everyone left, the girls napped so well.  I like to be cleaning up while I’m visiting.  It’s probably not the best thing to do but then when everyone leaves, it’s peace and quiet time for me too so that afternoon was the perfect down time for all.

For Annie’s 1^st birthday I had hand-made most of her decorations and went to a lot more work than I did for Claire’s.  I thought about reusing them but Claire gets so many hand-me downs in life that I decided she needed her own party décor.  I ended up buying most all of our decorations on Amazon and it was definitely the route to go. 

All in all we had a great 1^st birthday celebration for our sweet Claire McKenna.  Everyone was able to make it and we got some good pictures of everyone with her for her baby book.  Speaking of baby book, I worked furiously to get it filled out leading up to her party.  I had actually done a pretty good job of keeping up with it until around 10 months and she had a lot of firsts in those few missed months but I was able to get both the girl’s baby books updated for the year.  It feels good to have that done. 

Mother's Day 2017

On this Mother’s Day, I want to jot down today’s memories.  Every day moments that are occurring now in this current phase of mommyhood that I can look back on and read someday down the road…

When Annie gives me a hug, she a lot of times will say ‘My Mommy.”  Oh how I love her declare me as her mommy and how she says it with such pride and possession.  And then I go “My Annie” and we start to banter back and forth “My Mommy”/“My Annie!”

Claire blew me a kiss the other day for the first time.  Once she starts, she gives multiple ones in the row.  So precious.

 In the mornings, Annie will sit on the bathroom counter and watch me put on my makeup.  After I apply each item, she will say “Do me Mommy.”  So after I put on my mascara, I will put the lid back on and pretend I’m putting it on her.  She really believes she is wearing makeup and sits so still as I rub the closed mascara tube across her lashes.

Claire loves to carry this little toy purse around.  I’ll turn around to see her walking around with it in the nook of her arm all the time.   I’m sure she learned it from her sister, 2 girly girls that’s for sure!

The girls love to play chase in our bedroom.  I’ll start by getting on all 4s and start marching towards Claire who will laughs so hard and her walk turns into a run turns into falling over.  Then I’ll turn around and start chasing after Annie on the other side of the bed.  When I go back to chasing Claire, Annie is always yelling “Get me Mommy, Get me!”  Once I ‘get’ Annie, she’ll yell “Get Claire!” That game of chase around the bed is always full of little girl giggles.  

Annie is always a handful at bedtime but lately when I tuck her in for the 100^th time, she’ll say “Lay with me Mommy.”  I have a hard time denying that so I’ll lay next to her and snuggle for a minute or two.  She won’t want to snuggle with me forever so I try to take that minute or two to soak up those last squeezes of the day.  

Annie has learned her bedtime prayers pretty well.  Although she will speed thru it, get half way thru and then end with an Amen.  And she still hasn’t differentiated that dinner prayer is not the same as bedtime prayers.  So we usually let her say the bedtime prayer at dinner, then Aaron and I say the actual mealtime prayer out loud.   She’ll get it one of these days.

I love rocking Claire to sleep at night.  It’s our moment of solitude in the near darkness with her still in my arms. She is still in a sleep sack and taking a bottle at bedtime and I feel like these nights of doing just that are fleeting.  My rocking baby days are coming to an end but I’m going to rock her as long as she’ll let me. 

The days truly are long but the years are short. I don't want to wish these days away. These are the sweet memories I want to always remember this Mother’s Day 2017.