March 09, 2005
Dorothy's 1st Birthday
This past Sunday afternoon, it was one year since Dorothy entered the world and changed our lives more than we could have guessed. We celebrated her first year of life (and combined it with a bit of housewarming in our "new" house) on Sunday with family (both sets of Dorothy's grandparents had flown in) and friends.
As you can see above, we hung out on the deck for a while to enjoy the sun, even after finding out that parts of the deck were rotten (discovered by the holes we put in the decking), until it started getting cool out. Then we headed inside for cake and presents.
There are, of course, lots of pictures of the party, especially the cake-eating and present-opening. To be honest, it took a long time for Dorothy to get truly messy with the cake. At the beginning she wasn't sure what to make of this round thing in front of her, or all the people focusing on her. She enjoyed having some plasticware to play with, but it took Mommy putting a bit of frosting in Dorothy's mouth for her to really get interested in eating it. Once she realized it was good stuff, then she had more fun, and particularly enjoyed swatting a spoon (or two) onto the cake and then sucking on the frosting-encrusted spoon. At one point we took the spoons away, to encourage her to get her hands more directly involved. Dorothy really liked squishing frosting in her hand, and seeing it ooze out between her fingers.
Once she seemed to be done with eating, we tried to wash her in the laundry tub, but she screamed as soon as I set her in there. So we headed to the bathroom to put her into the bathtub. But her pant legs were covered in frosting, so I didn't want to undress her outside the tub. After a real quick bath, we re-dressed her and let her start attacking the presents. Her new friend Cassi had just turned 1 a few weeks earlier, and was happy to show Dorothy how this whole birthday party thing was supposed to work. :-)
The entire day was fun for everyone. Looking back on the previous year, though, is quite something. Elizabeth feels like it was just yesterday that she gave birth. While I do feel like time is flying, I also feel like the pre-Dorothy days occurred eons ago. It truly is a bit hard to remember the at-that-time-"normal" feeling of being free to do what we wanted, instead of having to always take Dorothy into consideration before doing anything. But she is just such a joy (on average) that I certainly don't regret the change at all. Dorothy is really starting to communicate and become mobile, and I look forward to the time when I can more easily talk with her and try understand her world.
Posted by Tom Nugent at March 9, 2005 08:46 PM