A Very Rainbow 1st Birthday Party

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The day after the first birthday came the first birthday party. It was, if I’m honest, a little bit surreal. I had a baby, and that baby was one, and now her baby friends were coming over to have a party. I felt like there must be some other adult in charge, as it couldn’t possibly be me. Only, it was me. I guess I’m a parent, or something?

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We were up late into the night preparing the food and getting the house ready. We got up early too, and I dashed to the post depot to collect some parcels before more party prep. The cavalry arrived at lunch time, and Alice & Alex did a marvellous job of hanging the bunting (what dip!) while Dave’s Dad and Sister blew up many, many helium balloons (and created a couple of fantastic balloon rainbows for me). It all came together brilliantly. In case you couldn’t guess, there was a bit of a rainbow theme.

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During the week Becca had helped me to gather up all of her ‘rainbow’ coloured toys, which were in a basket in the playroom, along with the colourful wooden blocks and megablocks. The kids had a good run around, getting in to everything, while we waited for everyone to arrive. Then came the food. I suddenly realised I hadn’t eaten all day and I was faced with a wall of cakes.

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The rainbow birthday cake, plus mini party rings and chocolate covered marshmallows, dipped in sprinkles.

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We also had a selection of sandwiches, breadsticks & dips, a rainbow fruit platter and a rainbow vegetable platter. I’d made little tags for everything in photoshop and printed them out.

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The sweet treats were rainbow cupcakes (all the different coloured cake batters layered together) and ice cream cone cupcakes made by my mum.

I took a close up of the totally awesome rainbow fruit platter, because I was seriously proud of it, but I have no idea what happened to it. I think it’s on another memory card. I guess it’s now a long lost memory card. It’s probably in the same place as my debit card, which disappeared this week without a trace after doing some online banking.. anyway.. back to the story..

We had just enough highchairs to go around. Becca had her first date, sharing a highchair tray with her baby buddy William. It was very sweet, and they even played a little footsie!

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Singing Happy Birthday.

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Of course, there were more presents..
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Plus more general adorableness..
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I think it was a pretty good party.

Posted in Baby | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Rebecca is One

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On the 6th of January, our baby girl turned ONE YEAR OLD. Um, what? That can’t be possible. She’s just new, our little tiny baby girl, all new and cute and needy and cute.  Oh wait, she’s crawling about and climbing on everything and dancing to every little tune. She’s not a tiny baby anymore. I’d be sad, if it wasn’t so totally awesome. One year olds rock!

Her birthday was a friday, and Dave had taken the day of work, so we got up late and then opened a bunch of presents. It seems like all we have done lately is open presents. I’m not knocking it.. but it’s going to be a long 12 months until the next lot! Pretty poor planning on our part, sorry kid.

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Her ‘main’ present was a fantastic Grimms XL Rainbow, which I – I mean we – have already had a lot of fun with.

After presents we took a mini road trip to a soft play centre in Banbury, Rugrats and Half Pints. She loved it, and it’s the first time she’s really been to somewhere like that. We had a bit of lunch and then she had a great time crawling around and exploring all of the tunnels and lights in the baby area. We had a little go in the ball pit too, and she looked pretty funny trying to crawl on top of the balls, ending up just sliding along on top of them. Dave and I had a pretty ace time too. It’s got to be one of the perks of having kids, that you get the excuse to go in the giant soft play centres. As Dave said while we were there, they should do ones for adults, they’re so much fun!

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We had a great time, worth the long drive to get there. Rugrats and Half Pints is a lovely soft play, with a really good separate baby area which a lot of soft play centres are lacking. It has nice sensory equipment as well as the expected.. uh.. soft bits. The food was pretty tasty too! I got her a couple of helium balloons to celebrate with but sadly one of them didn’t even make it home (the jury is still out on what happened, but rumour is she was trying out her new 4th tooth and got a little over enthusiastic).

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Here she is at exactly one year old.. looking pretty grumpy on the drive home.

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We lit her birthday ring after dinner, and talked about her year and all the amazing things she’s done so far. It was nice to think back and reflect on just how much she has grown in one year. It amazes me, utterly amazes me, that in just one year you can go from newborn baby to the baby we have now, the complete little character that we love sharing our lives with. She is a little person already, a little individual with such a personality. It’s been a pleasure sharing my last year with her, taking care of her and watching her grow. I can’t wait for what the next year will bring.

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Posted in Baby, Letters to Becca | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

My newest swear word – ‘wedding’

Thanks for the hot chocolate @smyther

If you missed it in my last post – I am now engaged. After 18 lovely days of being engaged, I decided to tentatively delve into the crazy world of wedding planning. Woah.

Now, I am a girl who has always wanted to be a wife. Life ambitions, when asked, were to get married and have kids, and raise those kids and look after that man. Whilst baking pretty cakes and having other mums over for tea and looking completely immaculate. Or something like that. Perhaps I was born in the wrong era.

I also have a bit of a thing for wedding blogs. I have been reading A Practical Wedding since Meg was still in the early stages of planning her own wedding. [Brides-to-be - if you don't already have APW in your feed reader, go subscribe right now. And then buy the book. You won't regret it. I love it so much, I'm advertising it in my sidebar for free.] I also go through phases of subscribing to the other wedding blogs. You know, the wedding porn. The post after post of beautiful, amazing, fabulous weddings type blogs. Then I delete them, because I’m not engaged yet and I feel sorry for myself. Then I re-subscribe because I miss having the omgsobeautifulweddingporn in my life.

With this in mind, you may think you can imagine exactly the kind of bride I would be. I’d want the big white princess dress, the tiara, and the mismatched but still totally coordinated bridesmaids in our wedding colours. We would arrive in the posh car (if not horse and carriage, why not eh?) at some lovely stately home, or maybe even a church. I would walk down the aisle to something classical played on strings, going on to a champagne reception I’d want to have a three course sit down meal, while everyone admires the beautiful table decorations I made myself, to really put some of our personality into the day, followed by more drinks and toasts. We would cut the three tier fruit cake with the cute little topper and then have our first dance while everyone snaps away, and we’d dance on into the night before being waved off on honeymoon.

Right?

Erm, well.. no. Actually, not at all.

I love weddings. I love wedding blogs. I love tv shows about weddings. I love seeing the beautiful princess dresses swooshing about, and the brides looking beautiful, and the gorgeous venues. I love looking at their sweet decorations and their colour schemes and what they’ve put the bridesmaids in. I especially love the look on the grooms face as he turns to see his bride for the first time that day, as she walks down the aisle towards him.

Only, I don’t want any of that. It’s amazing, and it’s beautiful, and it’s wonderful, but it’s not me – and it’s certainly not us.

We had already planned our dream wedding, long before we got engaged. Yes, we planned it. As a wise bride said in the A Practical Wedding book, “the wedding is not a surprise party for the groom”. Now that we are engaged, we are sticking to our plan, because it is what we wanted long before there was a budget, or a timeline, or a ring on my finger, and I think that makes it more real. Our day will be our day, and it will represent us as a couple and us as a family. It won’t be very expensive. It won’t be the best day of our lives (we already have a daughter, for goodness sake, what could be more amazing than that?) but it will be the best damn party we ever throw.

So, after those wonderful 18 days I thought I’d have a little google. I thought I’d see if I could find any ‘venues’ that would be a good fit for The Plan, that we could maybe take a look at in the coming months so that at least that important part was sorted. BIG mistake. A day later, I was already at breaking point. I was on edge, waiting for emails back from The Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever, a venue that I already suspected we wouldn’t be able to afford, but I already wanted more than anything ever. We couldn’t afford it. Well, no, we could afford it, but there was no way I was prepared to pay for it. It’s one day, people. An hour later and there’s already another Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever (That’s Even More Perfect Than The Last). I feel sick waiting for an email, a phone call. They reply. It sounds great. It sounds perfect, intact. Only.. we have to wait until April to go and see it.

I continue to plan for The Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever (v.2) because I just can’t help myself. I’m in it, now. I’m in the crazy wedding space. We’re deliberating over a guest list, I’m googling vendors for chair hire and other essentials. I’m making a budget. The photographer is all but booked, pending our visit to TMPWVE.2 in April.

It’s been three days guys. This is mental. It’s been three days since I thought I would ‘have a little google’, which quickly led to a downward spiral of link hopping, while fretting that no such TMPWVE existed anywhere near us. I was frustrated. I was upset. I was a crazy person.

For a few hours.

Now I see. I see why that thing that happens to brides happens to brides. I see why people talk about ‘planning your wedding’ in the way that they do. We aren’t even really planning a wedding – there is very little that is ‘weddingy’ about it apart from that it is a wedding – we are more just planning a party, and yet I am still this crazy already. Good luck to the rest of you.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I have re-subscribed to the wedding blogs. It’s finally acceptable for me to be reading them, right? No way am I going to pass on all that wedding porn.

Posted in Wedding | 2 Comments
  • Hello.
    I'm Janet.
    I'm mum to Rebecca.
    I'm addicted to twitter.
    I love tea. I hate coffee.
    I blog pretty sporadically.

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