First Birthday!!

So the photos will finally reveal R2D2's name.  We chose to name her Brianna.  I love her name!  It's Irish for strong and I think it fits her perfectly!

If you haven't picked up on it yet, I love arts and crafts, often to the point of losing sleep to finish them. I knew I wanted to make Bri's birthday special, so arts and craft time it was!!  I used etsy a lot, man I love that site!

We'll start with her smash cake.  For her actual birthday, I made it into a little photo shoot. :) 

I think it's an understatement to say she enjoyed her cake.  I used the Wilton tip 2D to make the rosettes.

 Of course I needed to buy here a special birthday outfit. Ends up, I bought two for her.  I absolutely, absolutely loved her dress.  Photo courtesy of Lisa Marie Photography and dress made by OsEsterninhos.

And her shirt was made by The Sassy Squirrel Mom-mom bought her this chair for her birthday.  She loves it!!

Bib made by Julianne Originals and banner by Creative Party Banners.

I spray painted the letters, made the flowers out of felt, and then glued all onto the wreath.

I saw the frame on clearance in Michael's.  I didn't know how I was going to use it, but couldn't pass up the price.  I like the B in the middle!

 I displayed her basket pictures in our dining room.

 And her cake, labor of love!  Despite being time consuming, I found the cake decorating relaxing.  The butterflies are actually edible, and I thought they looked very realistic. I purchased them from Sugar Robot.  For the cupcake stand, I spray painted Wilton's white cardboard stand.

I think Brianna had a wonderful first birthday.  Mommy and Daddy love you very much!!

12 Months!!!

As the bottom picture shows, R2D2 is beyond excited to be finished with her basket photos!  I can't believe our baby girl is one year old now.  It's been a great year.  We survived parenthood and finishing my last year of residency.  I am so grateful to my parents, Joe's mom, friends, and all who have helped us survive this past year.

Baby girl loves to play and I love watching her learn and figure things out on her own.  I think we're back to baths as her favorite activity.  This girl loves splashing water and we have to make sure Winston's water bowl is up or else she'll play away.  She doesn't like the ocean or big pools yet though.

At her one year check up she weighed 23 pounds (89%) and was 29.5" long (63%).  Well, I guess I no longer have to worry about failure to thrive in this little one.  Now that we have reached a year, I'm going to cut back on breastfeeding.  I'll see how long we want to continue morning and night feedings, but I'm going to stop pumping once I go back to work.  Fortunately she has no problem taking whole milk, and I still have some frozen breast milk we'll use.

In terms of clothes, she's hover between 12 month and 18 month sizes.  She still hates shoes and socks.

And, she's walking!!!  She's slowly started to walk more instead of crawling, but she can crawl faster than walking for now.

We're trying to figure out if she knows mama and dada specifically yet.  I think she knows hi too.  She will always say mama and dada, but sometimes she still says dada when looking at me, but other times she'll keep saying dada until Joe says hi to her.