Well, here we are at the end of September and I am finally getting around to sharing pictures from when Abi had her smash the cake and her first birthday milestone pictures. Abi is our little sunshine and so we themed her party and her smash the cake to go with her bright smile.
Abi has a smile that will turn any frown around. She lights up the faces of strangers whenever we go out. Seriously, people tell me all the time how happy she is and I love to see her brighten up the lives of others, even if just for a moment.
I have my hands full with three kids, as I am sure anyone can imagine, and three girls makes for loads of hand-me-downs. Abi has been the recipient of the third generation (sometimes fourth) girl clothes. Poor dear. Right now, she doesn’t know any better. Someday she will. I try my best to make things special for her like buying her a new outfit for her birthday pictures.
Here is Abi, as happy as can be. She is one! Hard to believe time has flown by this quickly and part of me is really sad that my baby is no longer considered a baby. I did try my best to enjoy and savor every moment and milestone but no matter what, the time has flown by too quickly.
Abi still feels like a baby to us. She is obviously the littlest one in our house, she LOVES to be held, she doesn’t say a lot of words, makes a mess when she eats, and she isn’t anywhere close to walking yet. She hasn’t mastered puling up yet either… Her personality is such that she is very cautious and she gets scared easily. So, it just took falling down one time when she pulled up and she decided scooting was way better. We have been working with her on standing up and being more confident and comfortable with puling up and playing while standing. Truth is, our little Abi will probably have to have some therapy so she can gain more confidence and start cruising.
Selfishly, I don’t mind so much that she isn’t walking yet, other than the fact that it is an important milestone. I enjoy her scooting and not climbing up the stairs. I enjoy having her feel like a baby but I am ready for her to start walking…
In the meantime, we will enjoy her being little. I am being reminded again that all babies are different. They have their own ways of communicating and do things in their own time. Abi is our joy and our delight. We love seeing how she is her own little person. She may look like one of our other girls more (at times) or show some of the same traits as one of the big girls BUT she is so unique.
“Hi!!” She is so sweet!
Abi loves to clap, clap, clap. She loves to growl (hilarious to witness this although it does turn heads hahaha) too. She enjoys playing with the big girls outside on our porch where she just scoots around. She doesn’t get too close to the stairs on the porch because she has guessed that she will be hurt by them. Again, her personality is very cautious and she prefers not to be pushed outside of her comfort zone.
I love her little expression here. It is adorable how she sticks her teeth out just a little.
This is my little Abi. Her fuzzy hair rocks!
Probably my favorite picture from her milestone session!
This just happened. I had been trying to get Abi to look at me and all she wanted to do was take in her surroundings. Then, she turned back to smile at me. Sigh. She is so beautiful!
Then it was time to smash some cake! YUM! Whole foods does an amazing job. I feel a lot better about letting her chow down on some cake if I know the ingredients are not mostly crap. They use nationally sourced dyes so it is mainly derived from vegetables. Abi loves strawberries so we had the filling be a strawberry filling. All of us got to try this and it was DELICIOUS!!! Whole foods for the win!
So, it is quite funny and unexoected that Abi would actually NOT be all that into the cake. I have photographed many smash the cake sessions. Many! There are numerous babies who I have photographed who did not like the cake. They didn’t like getting messy or they felt too much attention on them so they cried through it. Well, Abi was closer to that than she was to how Kat and Ella responded to their cake. My big girls devoured the cake…like the entire thing! I went back and looked at their sessions after I did this one and I laughed and laughed. Ella and Kat did too! That, my friends, is why I do this. I want to look back on these moments and delight in the memory of each little person. Each of them are so different and extremely significant to me!
Once she warmed up to the idea of the cake (and it took a good 10 minutes) then she was a little more excited. Abi was still very slow going. She mainly just squished it in between her fingers for a while.
We kept trying to get her to dig in…but then we decided to let her be and let her enjoy the cake. I love this image from her smash the cake! It might be my favorite one…
I love her squishy face! She reminds me of Ella when she squints her nose like this.
You can see some of the decorations here that I made for her birthday party and I knew we could use for her smash the cake.
Get it girl!!
Nom nom nom
You can really see her eyes changing color here. She used to have the same color eyes as Kat. Kat’s have become more hazel in the last year. Abi’s eyes changed way sooner. They are beautiful!
Yesssssss!
Towards the end she really started to enjoy it! At this point, we had some ants wanting to taste the cake…so we had to wrap up!
This is another one that may be my favorite. I love her joy and that squishy nose!
And, that’s a wrap! We enjoyed spoiling this little ray of sunshine. I am not going to pretend like this was easy to pull together – it was not! It has become harder with each child to fully plan and execute a session. What you don’t see is the two other children behind me throwing a fit because they want some cake too. What you don’t see is the time and effort it took for me to make this moment happen and to clean it up. Even though this was quite challenging, I am glad we did this. I am happy we made a really big deal about Abi turning one. I want to look back on their lives, the little years and all of the big milestones ahead, and remember just how special these people are. I hope they grow up and look at this blog and smile. I hope I can sit down in a few years with Abi, like I did with Kat and Ella, and enjoy this memory. Happy first Birthday, baby girl! You are mommy’s sunshine!!!!!
