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.

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.

A great support network available when you have a baby is Mothers' Group. In the beginning, the only thing you have in common with the other mums is that you live in the area and have newborns. In time you bond over things such as lack of sleep and talk about the colour of your baby's poo. Eventually you even talk about things other than your beautiful babies. Mothers' group is still one of the places I turn to for advice. Although, we're all first time mums so it's bit of the blind leading the blind. At least we're supported while we stumble around in the dark.

Our babies are all born around the same time so that means that they all turn one at around the same time. At the moment we're in the middle of what Andrew and I have nicknamed "First Birthday Season". Over the past few weekends we've been to the first round of first birthday parties. We've celebrated Felix's, Euan C's and Euan S's birthdays.

Evie has a great time at the parties. She gets to crawl around and poke other babies in the face, to play with other kids' toys and most importantly parties involve caaaaake! (Evie loves cake. She has inherited her mother's sweet tooth.) I have fun too, and get to take lots of cute photos of all the kiddies.

There is one thing that Evie is not a fan of and that is the cheering that happens at the end of the singing of Happy Birthday. At both parties Evie started crying after everyone sung Happy Birthday. I was confused because I've been singing Happy Birthday to her at home in preparation for her own birthday and she has never cried. So we did a little experiement at home after the party. When Andrew and I cheered Hip Hip Hooray at home she cracked it big time. Poor bubba, I guess we won't be doing that at her birthday.



More photos from Felix's birthday (slideshow), Euan C's birthday (slideshow) and Euan S's birthday (slideshow) on Flickr.

Evie is 10 months old. Evie is giving us the thumbs up this month. (She's actually 10 and a half months old. Uni work got on top of me. Same old excuse! Hopefully it won't be an excuse for very much longer.)

We finally have teeth! Yay! For about two weeks Evie was manically gumming all her toys and was just a tad grumpy. Then one morning when she was gnawing my finger I could feel a sharp little point. It was her first toothy peg. Evie is definitely not dentally gifted. Most of the other babies in Mothers' group have about eight teeth. Apparently the timing of teeth is hereditary and both Andrew and I were late to get them.

Evie's special trick this month is clapping. To teach Evie to clap Andrew and I would clap our hands and sing "Everybody's clapping". After a few repetitions of the song (ok, maybe more than a few) Evie started to clap along with us. She is now an excellent clapper. She claps when I sing to her (probably the only person in the world who likes my singing). She also claps when she thinks she's done something well. She gives herself a clap when she eats all her dinner. She also claps herself when she goes from being on her tummy to sitting. Evie recognises the power of positive thinking.

At 10 months old Evie is almost crawling. She can go from sitting into the crawling position but isn't quite sure how to move forwards yet. She loves walking though. We hold her hands and let her dictate the direction. When she reaches something interesting (Mummy's handbag, the nappy bag, a pile of shoes) she'll plonk herself down and refuse to keep moving until she's had a good rummage.

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

We celebrated Hamish's 2nd birthday with a picnic BBQ at Clareville beach. After the torrential downpour of the week before we were lucky with the weather. It was such a beautiful day.

The kiddies had a wonderful time playing in the water and digging in the sand. Clareville beach is a great spot for an outing. Pity it's so far away!

Sarah and Duncan had requested no gifts but I hate to turn up empty handed. In lieu of a gift I made Bakerella's Cookies and Cream cupcakes. Unfortunately, I only had time to make 12 cupcakes. Andrew pointed out that there wasn't going to be enough to go around especially if there were lots of people there. Andrew was right, of course. There were about 20 kids there and with all the parents, 12 cupcakes just weren't going to cut it.

So I made an executive decision. The cupcakes were for the adults. In my opinion, cupcakes are totally wasted on children as they generally just lick the icing off the top and leave the cake bit behind. The kids enjoyed Sarah's colourful and tasty train cake and the cupcakes were distributed amongst the adults. There still weren't enough for all the adults. I need to be a better sharer.


Happy 2nd Birthday Hamish!

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.