Our little girl is one! I can't believe we are parents to a one year old. This mum thing still feels kind of new. Evie's 12 month post is coming soon. I thought I'd start out with a birthday party post.

We celebrated Evie's first birthday with a small gathering of family and friends. Evie shares her birthday with her Uncle Simon and this year her birthday was very close to Mother's Day. We figured that we'd celebrate them all with a Evie's first birthday / Simon is old / Mother's Day gathering. Happy birthday my beautiful little girl! (and happy birthday to Uncle Simon!)

Ok... now for the party details.

I love a party with a theme but I wanted to go with something simple for Evie's first birthday. I'd seen some super cute rainbow themed parties on Pinterest and I thought that would be a good theme for a first birthday.

I made a chocolate rainbow cake (with Andrew's help. He cut out the rainbow shape) which I iced with butter cream and covered in smarties. I added a couple of cloud cakes at the bottom of the rainbow for the babies to eat as smarties aren't really baby friendly. The clouds were super tasty as I kinda layered on the frosting. Mmmm butter cream icing.

I also made a bunch of gluten-free rainbow cupcakes. You may recognise these as I've made them before. It was quite appropriate to make these for Evie's first birthday as I whipped up a batch of these while I was in labour with her a year ago.

I'm on prac at the moment and super busy so I was lucky to have some help with some of the other party items. Annie picked up a cute rainbow helium balloon for Evie from Balloon Inflation in Erko. Clare also whipped up this rainbow fruit platter. Thanks girls!


There were also some things that I had wanted to make but I didn't have the time so had to throw money at the problem.

I had wanted to make Evie a fabric birthday hat but ended up buying one from FeltLikeCelebrating on Etsy. It was very cute but it didn't stay on for very long. Evie isn't a fan of hats and whenever we put one her head she takes it straight off. Here is a cute photo of her handing the birthday hat to Andrew. "No thanks Daddy!" is what she is trying to say.


We asked everyone to come dressed in their favourite colour of the rainbow (I was in red and Andrew wore blue). Evie hasn't told us what her favourite colour is yet so we dressed in her a cute white Threadless tee which read "So far, this is the oldest I've ever been."


Thanks to everyone who came and helped us celebrate Evie's birthday (and Simon's birthday and Mother's Day). And an extra special thank you goes to Mum and Dad who kindly hosted the party for us.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

1. Day091: Sad, sick bubba in a bouncer
2. Day092: Man and woman
3. Day093: My last day of Prac
4. Day094: Happy Eddy
5. Day095: Evie is finally big enough for a forward facing car seat
6. Day096: Good Friday feast
7. Day097: Sleeping beauty with bear
8. Day098: View of Goulburn from the War Memorial
9. Day099: Grandma and Evie

I have to share the story about the photo from Day 116. On Thursday, Evie and I caught up with Caitlin and her twins Edward and Poppy. We wandered down to Woolloomooloo so I could try Caitlin's new favourite lamington, we hung out in Hyde Park for a bit and then we lunched in the Westfield food court.

On our wanderings around the city I noticed that Poppy and Edward are the baby version of celebrities. People would smile and wave at them whenever we walked past. Then when we got the babies out for a little bit of run / crawl around in Hyde Park we were completely mobbed by Asian tourists. The tourists were cooing at the babies and taking lots of pictures.

It was funny at first and then it got a bit unsettling. The tourists didn't speak any English so we weren't able to communicate that the babies were uncomfortable with all the attention. Eventually the tourists moved on. It was a little bit of a taste of how it feels to be stalked by paparazzi. Not my cup of tea.

1. Day082: Hot cross buns, hot cross buns
2. Day083: Elliot
3. Day084: Hunger Games at Gold Class... woop!
4. Day085: "farm fresh" cage eggs
5. Day086: TD's yummy lamb stew for dinner
6. Day087: My poor sick bubba is not so keen on sleeping atm
7. Day088: Green in Dully
8. Day089: This week requires chips
9. Day090: Ring-a-ring-a-rosy

Evie is 11 months old.

Evie is officially crawling. It made it a little difficult to get this month's photo. I was on child wrangling duties. I'd put Evie down on the ground on one side of the living room. She'd immediately start crawling, Andrew would snap away and we kept our fingers crossed that she'd crawl across the play mat on her journey to muckle something. We did this a few times before we managed to get a photo we were happy with. Poor Evie was a little frustrated by the end of it because we kept on dragging her away from stuff that she wanted to play with.

Evie's new independence means that she is into everything! She's not interested in playing with her toys anymore but wants to explore every corner of the apartment. It goes a little bit like this: Look! A pile of shoes! Let me throw them around. Look! A rubber doorstop! I wonder what it tastes like... nom nom nom. Look! A cardboard box! Let me bang on it for a bit. It's been a very quick lesson in how to child proof a house. We follow Evie around and when we find her playing with something that she probably shouldn't play with we put it away.

For a giggle, here is one of the outtakes from this month's photo shoot.

See Evie's monthly photos (slideshow) on Flickr.