Oh I just can't believe we have a ONE-year old at our house!  Julia has gotten SO BIG (see above picture for demonstration.)  She really is such a big girl in so many ways!  Before I get into that, though, let me tell you about her big birthday weekend.

She spent her birthday morning opening up presents and listening to us sing "Happy Birthday" a bunch of times.  I wish we would have taped her hearing it for the first time.  She just looked at us with this huge smile on her face and when we got to the "to Julia" part, she pointed to herself (like "me?").  It was so cute that I decided we needed to sing it all day long.  She never seemed to get sick of it.

After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, she spent 3 hours playing hard at the park with friends, took a great big afternoon nap and then spent the evening with her two favorite people.  Perfect day.

Then on Saturday we had her first birthday party.  This was so fun!  Even though we were hoping for a sunny day and got severe thunderstorms, we made the best of it and kids were still able to play a little in the front yard.  I think Julia loved seeing so many of her friends and family in her house.

 

We owe a huge Thank You to our family who helped us pull this thing off.  We couldn't have done it without all the cleaning, babysitting and food you supplied.

Then Sunday we had a little party to celebrate Ellen and Julia's birthdays at their Nana's house--more presents and more cake!  She LOVED her Aunt Sue's icing. 

I think she knows it's a bench.

So this family has spent the last few days recovering from a ton of fun and sugar and activities.  Especially me!  It has been really nice to take it easy and actually have nothing to do.   Julia and my new favorite thing to do is sit on the porch and talk.  Like this:

I'm hoping she has enough new toys to make this work for most of the summer. 

We had her one-year checkup on Tuesday and she's doing great!  She is weighing in at 17 lbs 13 oz and 27 1/2 inches tall.  Still no teeth (turns out I was wrong about this one--long, slightly embarassing story), but the doctor assured us that everything's fine, she's just probably going to get a lot all at once, bless her heart.

As far as everything else goes, she is talking more, climbing more, into A LOT more and just acting like a one-year-old, I guess.  Here is one last video of our big girl.