12 months!

At 12 months, Amelia:

• is walking! She has been able to walk for several weeks, but only recently has decided walking is her main form of getting around. We watched Daddy's boys practice last week and she had so much fun walking all over the gym. We will all be spending a lot more time there starting in a couple of weeks.
• talks non-stop. Her most recent favorite word is baby. She got a couple of baby dolls for her birthday and she is so sweet with them. She holds them gently (most of the time) and says quietly "baa-bii." She is sweet to the smaller babies in the nursery at church, but she will be moving into the toddler class soon, and that makes me sad!
• loves to get into cabinets in the bathroom and kitchen. She loves to pull out the pots and pans, toilet paper, or whatever she can get into. I have vowed to finally go get some of those child proof things for the cabinets this weekend.
• enjoys climbing stairs. We don't have any inside our house, but she loves to climb up the steps on our front porch and the stairs at Grammy and Papa's. She's fearless about climbing.
• wears a size 3 diaper and is just getting into 12 months clothes. She wears a size 3 shoe, but it won't be much longer until she goes up to a 4. She could probably go up to a size 4 diaper soon too, since the sizes overlap.
• eats 3 meals a day of table food and a couple of snacks in between with juice or water from her sippy cup. She is a great eater, and rarely turns anything down. She lets us know she is finished by playing with her food and throwing it and her sippy cup on the floor.
• drinks whole milk from her bottle about twice a day, but is already letting go of that second bottle often, so we'll probably start the process to get rid of it this weekend.
• goes to bed around 7:30 or 8 and sleeps until around 7 in the morning. She usually takes a morning and an afternoon nap for about an hour at a time, but this varies. Sometimes she naps for up to 2 1/2 or 3 hours at a time. On Sundays she usually doesn't nap in the nursery at church and we all enjoy a good Sunday afternoon nap together. She must have her Lovie to go to sleep.
• has recently developed an attachment to her paci. For most of her life, she could take it or leave it, but I started putting it in her mouth to keep her from putting stuff she shouldn't in there. After we get rid of the bottle, we'll work on the paci.
• has six teeth- four on top and two on bottom.
• is just a normal, healthy, happy, curious, silly, active, huggable baby girl, and we are so blessed to have had her in our lives for one whole year!

Edited to add: She had her one-year check-up yesterday and her stats are 23 pounds, and 30 1/2 inches. She's in the 75th percentile in weight and 95th in height. She's still long and lean, and very healthy. We are so thankful for that!

Happy Birthday to our princess!

What a year it has been! I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a teary-eyed mess all day today. I'll post her 12 month update later, but in the meantime enjoy our first year in photos.

The party

Let's talk about the party, shall we? First of all, a disclaimer: I am aware that this was totally ridiculous and over the top for a child's first birthday. However, I am not sorry about it. I adore party planning and all things cute, and I enjoyed celebrating the first year of our precious girl's life with our friends and family.

Now for the photos. Thanks so much to Aunt Katie for capturing the memories. She took over 400 pics! Then she narrowed it down to just over 200, and now I'm going to try to narrow it down to just a few for this post. If you are so inclined to view all of them (or purchase prints if you want), you can go here. I think you have to register on Snapfish to look, but it doesn't take long.

First the decor:Almost none of the decor is an original idea of mine, so I can't take credit. I looked at lots of blogs and party planning sites and combined ideas, and put my own spin on a lot of them. My friend Courtney loaned me the most fabulous machine ever that I used to create the banners. Now, even though I didn't come up with most of these ideas, that doesn't mean I didn't spend hours every night after the baby went to sleep working on them! Katie and Mare helped me with my party crafts too, so I have to thank them. I was so pleased with how the cake turned out, and I have to brag that I had it made at Piggly Wiggly! I priced this cake with a local caterer and she gave me an obscene total, then I heard about the girl at the Pig and I checked out some photos of her work. I'm glad I took a chance- I got a great cake for a great price. If you know me at all, you know I love fabulous things, but I also like to get the best deal on pretty much whatever I'm in the market for. It's like a game for me.

I loved putting together the candy buffet. The decor becomes a party favor!


Ok, enough about that. On to the star of the show, the birthday girl! We were too busy getting everything ready up to the last few minutes that we didn't do a photo shoot of the birthday girl by herself in her outfit. For those who have asked, a friend at church did the cupcake applique on her onesie, she wore the tutu that I bought on Etsy for her last photo shoot, the tights were from Children's Place and were a happy from Aunt Mare, and I made the bow out of a napkin ring I bought at Hobby Lobby, ha.

Playing in the bounce houses my parents brought over. She loved this thing!

My parents bought the two jumpys a few years ago after they had rented some a few times for kids parties at church. I asked them why they purhased them, and they said at the time, "Well, we can use them for the grandchildren." I remember telling them, "Um, you don't have any grandchildren." This was not long after Cliff and I got married and I certainly wasn't thinking about kids at the time.

Well, that day has now come, and we all enjoyed getting to see Amelia play in the jumpy houses. No one loved it more than my parents. Those things paid for themselves as soon as they heard her giggling on that slide.

Side note: Have y'all seen that show on A&E, Hoarders? Well, we think Amelia might be one. She always has to have a bunch of stuff in her hands and tries to get around with her arms loaded down with stuff. Here she has Lovie in one hand and a shoe in the other while she's sliding.

Anyway...

Here she is playing on the fun little slide Grammy and Papa got her for her birthday. We love to play outside, but we didn't have a lot to do out there, so now we are excited to have outdoor toys.

Uncle Chris and the birthday girl. His face is healing well after his accident. Thanks for your prayers for him. We were so glad he and Aunt Kathryn came all the way from Arkansas for the party. This is one loved little girl!

So many of Amelia's little friends were sweet enough to join us. Here she is greeting snuggly little Carter.

And Tucker. His birthday party is coming up Saturday. Braden and his mom are in the background.

Misti and Madelyn with me and Mimi. It's only been a couple of months since we saw Madelyn at her birthday luau, and she has gotten so big since then.

Here we are doing our Wolfpack pose. Misti and I grew up together and were roomates at Co-Lin, and we met Nina and Givens there and we were all roomies our sophomore year. Look at Madelyn doing the wolfpack too! Amelia is doing the "let's see if I can get my whole hand in my mouth" pose.

Time for cake! I've dreamed about seeing my little girl dig into her first birthday cake for the longest time, before I ever even met her.

Cake in the hair.Time for presents! She got so many cute things. Clothes, toys, books, she loves it all!

Our sweet friend, Pailyn came to the party and asked her mama to bring her camera along. Isn't the roo thoughtful? Not only did her mama bring her camera, but she took some fabulous shots of the party. If you're friends with me on facebook, she tagged me in a few there, and if you're not, hop on over to Pailyn's very own blog to see a few of her mama's shots. Thanks, Lindey! We invited you and the roo as our guests, but the surprise of the fab photos was better than we could have imagined!
More party snapshots. Someone was getting a little tired.

Our cousin Kaitlyn and her boyfriend Chad came all the way from Laurel and were so sweet to help us set things up before the party

Love this one of Braden. Those polka dot balloons made me so happy.

Birthday girl and Uncle Justin.
Aunt Mare and our cousin Ashley with her little girl, Aubrey.

Losing her headband on the slide.

My cousin, Mandy's little boy, Bode.

Talkin to sweet Nana.Aunt Katie took a break to be in a couple of pics. This was at the end of the party when the tutu and bow came off and the little hostess was winding down. Notice she's hoarding again. Lovie and a lollipop and probably a shoe in there somewhere too.Ok, looks like it was two lollipops. Silly girl.
Love this one of her and Joyce.

With Papaw Bob


Now with Papa. She got her second wind here.

Sharing with Aunt Mare

And Grammy!
Aunt Lisa showed up at the end!

As soon as she got inside she was out! She didn't want to give it up until the last person left. She just loves entertaining. That's my girl!

Thanks to all our friends and family who came (some from great distances) and helped us celebrate Amelia's special day. Special thanks to my parents, Katie, Mare and Justin for helping us get everything together.

As you may have noticed, the party was wonderful. I am so thankful to have all these precious memories and photos to share with Amelia one day. We are blessed beyond measure to have her in our lives! Her real birthday is Thursday, so check back then for her twelve-month update.