Sally's Birthday Luncheon

On Sally's actual birthday, we took her out to breakfast for chocolate chip pancakes and let her pig out.  For her party a few days later, we thought we'd do something a bit more refined for our little lady. ;)  We ended up hosting an afternoon luncheon out on the lawn.  Quite fit for a princess, I'd say.

We didn't intend for it to be a mostly-girls party, but when Grandpa had to stay behind to help his aging father and Uncle Nate couldn't come, our guests ended up being Grandma, Aunt Ashley, Cousins Kate and Lucy, and my good friend Taryn and her three daughters.  I hope Noah and Ryan didn't mind all that female company!

We had a yummy lunch under the trees, and then we all watched Sally smash her birthday cake.  She could hardly wait to dig in!

Mmm, I think I want that. 

Come on, Dad, let me at it!

This cake was another team effort!  I baked the cakes; my mother-in-law frosted them.  Didn't she do a great job??  My kids are so lucky to have domestically-gifted and creative grandmas and aunts.  I don't know if Little Sally cared much what the cake looked like, but she sure seemed to enjoy it!  I will never forget how she grabbed fistfuls of frosting and smacked her lips appreciatively while she dug in.  Sweetest sweetest girl.

After cake, we did presents, and Sally was so patient with all of the kids swarming her and grabbing the gifts.  Everyone was so excited about her new toys, especially the princess car from Grandma and the water table from Bapa, and it wasn't until after the party that she was able to actually enjoy them on her own.

The highlight of the party for me was showing our guests the video that I put together of Sally's first year.  I compiled some of my favorite photos and video clips, picked out a few special songs, and spent several hours putting it together in iMovie.  I made a similar video for Noah when he turned one, and this is a tradition that is worth the effort to me.  I am a sentimental sap, and I love the way that both videos turned out.  (If you're interested, you can watch Sally's video here and Noah's video here.)

We borrowed our friend's projector again and created "Cinema Sally" in Noah's room to watch the slideshow.  Even though a few of the kids were super crazy and jumping around during the film (eh hem, Noah and Kate!), it was a special way to end Sally's celebration of one year of life.

I love our sweet Sally Grace.  She has brought us so much joy this year and I know she will continue to in the years to come!  I feel beyond blessed to be her mama, and I'm so glad I was able to host a little luncheon in her honor.

Noah's Minion Mayhem

It's birthday season in the Nielson household, and this year, Noah got a real, all-out, invite-friends birthday party--his first ever.  He loved it.

We chose "minions" as the theme for his party because Noah thinks they are simply hilarious.  My sister who is a craft blogger directed me to a few great ideas online, Noah's birthmom who is a cake decorator sent me a photo and instructions for the cake, and then Ryan and I put our heads together and came up with a few additional activities. It was actually quite fun to put it all together.

When guests arrived, we let them watch a few short minion clips which we projected onto Noah's wall because we don't have a TV.  The bedroom cinema was a hit, and it gave the grown ups a few more minutes to scramble and finish up party preparations.  (Eh hem, it's possible that the cake was still being decorated in the kitchen.)

After the movie, we made some minion hats.  It was absurdly chaotic with all of those little hands attempting to make their own hat, but the grown-ups all jumped in to help, and the hats turned out so cute!  This was one of those ideas that came from the miraculous internet (here).

Noah and his minions

Tiniest minion of all

Cutest cousin Kate!

Then it was time for the obstacle course, which was an extremely random assortment of tasks created by Ryan.  He masterminded the whole thing, which included going into a minion transformer, spinning in a twirly chair, climbing through a tunnel, zooming out of Gru's laboratory on a firetruck, rescuing a minion from a hammock full of stuffed animals, throwing balls at a giant Lego head popping in and out of a window (yeah, no idea what this has to do with minions, but the kids were beyond thrilled to do it), and grabbing a banana out of a tree.  It was so cute to see Ryan explain it all to the kiddos--I love it when he gets silly.

Evil Lego head?

Just look at the delight in their eyes

Noah even got to take a turn as the Lego head

After the obstacle course, it was time for the piñata, which Noah and his minions smashed to smithereens after a good ten-minutes of whacks.

And then, we admired and devoured the cake.

A word about that masterpiece cake.  I would never, not in a million years, attempt such a cake if I didn't have a team of people to do it with me.  I would make a boxed brownie mix like I did last year.  But when I have Katie, Ryan, and my mother-in-law to help me, it is somehow possible to create these magical cakes for Noah, and I feel like it's a special thing that connects him to his birthmom, which makes the extra effort worth it.  I baked the cakes (four round pans and a glass bowl), Sally frosted it with yellow buttercream (my mother-in-law, not the baby), and Ryan made the fondant details.  Victory!

He looks quite amazed with the final product.  

 

And then, the party was over.  Phew!  After all the kids left, we headed to the movie theater with the family to see an afternoon showing of "Minions," of course.  I did not go because someone needed to stay behind with the napping babies, and to be honest, I needed a couple of hours to recover after all that minion mayhem.

As soon as the movie-goers returned, we were back at it with pizza and gifts.  We didn't do any presents at the party because Noah just gets really overstimulated and turns into a me-me-me monster (don't all little kids?), but he got plenty spoiled by family that evening.  Ridiculously spoiled, as a matter of fact!

Katie and Drew gave him a set of rescue vehicles that he is obsessed with.

His birth grandparents gave him a darling firefighter costume, which he insisted on wearing immediately.

Grandma and Grandpa gave him a set of Rescue Bots which he had been wanting ever since learning about them from his hero, Cousin Callum.  

Bapa gave him the world's biggest set of Magformers--as big as he is! These are such a great toy and provide hours of fun!

Mom and Dad didn't give him any gifts at the party but instead gave him a new book to open each night of week leading up to his birthday.  I love this tradition, and I love these amazing Usborne books that we've discovered since my sister became a consultant.  Their non-fiction books are truly amazing, and he loves this one called The Big Book of Big Sea Creatures.  

We ended the day with a little quiet time with Katie and Drew, who stayed for a couple of hours after everyone else had left. We ate leftover cake in the backyard at dusk, and then we let go of Noah's birthday balloons one by one, making special wishes for his coming year.  Noah loves this tradition.

I love that we get to spend time with Katie and Drew around Noah's birthday every year--it's such a special reminder of that night four years ago when we were all together in the delivery room as Noah came into the world.  Adoption is such a miracle, and so is our little Noah boy.

All in all, it was a perfect day for a perfect boy.  I felt so blessed to not only have some of his little friends participate in the fun, but also to have our family members from Pocatello drive to be there (two weekends in a row, thanks to Sally's party the Saturday before!) and his birthparents from Utah drive to be there.  So many people love Noah, and it's easy to see why.  He is hilarious, spunky, smart, energetic, a tad wild, and truly one-of-a-kind.  I'm so glad we could spend a day celebrating him.  

A Little Life Unfolding

Sweetest Sweetest Baby Girl,

I watched you today on the video monitor as you woke from your afternoon nap. You lay there for a moment, groggy and disoriented, sucking your pacifier and listening to the happy noises of your brother playing in his room next door.

Then you noticed the balloons.You lifted your tiny finger and pointed, not sure what you were seeing.

You got up slowly on your knees, your hair a mess of bedhead, your big blue eyes full of wonder as you tilted your head upward. You didn’t reach for them at first, but just looked at them, thoughtful.

After a minute or so, you stood and reached.And I felt that familiar ache, that swelling that feels like gratitude and melancholy all at once, at the sight of my tiny human on tippy toes, stretching toward her first birthday balloons.

Brother and I snuck the balloons into your room while you were napping. He was so excited, and although I knew there was a chance that he would wake you, I let him help me anyway.  He is your best friend, your only real playmate, and you adore him. You don’t say “Mama” yet, but you do say “Noah.”  Of course that beloved big brother of yours had to be part of the balloon surprise.

Like the angel that you are, you slept right through our sneaking.  You have turned into a champion napper, and you’ve always been a really content baby.  You have made the last year easy on me, and I love you for it.  Sweetness seems to be an innate part of your disposition.

A year ago today, when you were a tiny, bruised, sleepy newborn, I held you in my arms and wondered what you would be like.  It was hard to imagine how you would fit into our family dynamic, what your temperament would be like, how I would manage with two children at home.  Though I loved you immediately, you didn’t feel familiar yet.  You felt fragile, and I felt fragile in my role as your mother.   

Now everything about you is familiar: the way you wriggle away when I change your diaper, the sound of your giggle as I chase after you on hands and knees; the way you pull at my earrings the moment that I lift you close to my face, or lunge for me when I walk into the room and you are in someone else’s arms.

I know what you will do before you do it.  You have become an extension of me—a living, breathing, bear-crawling piece of my heart.  And though everything about your babyhood is so familiar to me now, I know that in a few years, I won’t be able to remember what you were like as a one-year-old.  I will remember in generalities, but not in all of these specifics.  You will be a little girl to me then, and I will know with perfect clarity everything about you at that stage, but all that will remain of your babyhood will be the photos and videos—and the details that I have captured in writing.  Which is why I do it and always will.

So tonight I sit down and write you this letter to record the moment when I watched you wake up to balloons overhead on your first birthday—when my heart filled with love for my perfect one-year-old girl with the curls at the back of your head, the one darling snaggle tooth, and the sweetest habit of burying your head against my shoulder when you are sleepy.

You are a perfect fit, not just in that space on my shoulder, cradled between my cheek and my heart, but in this family.  You have made every day since your birth better than the days before it—fuller, more complete—for all of us.  For Daddy, for Noah, and for me.

Tonight the four of us played with your birthday balloons out in the backyard and took photos of you climbing on Noah’s red firetruck.  It was windy, and it was past your bedtime. Noah was wired, and Mom and Dad were a little cranky, but we took a few moments to talk about our wishes for you for this next year and to release your balloons one by one into the sky.

Noah wished that you will have a delicious cake on Saturday at your little family party; Dad wished that you will get more teeth this next year (of course he did); and I wished that even when you are older, you will keep giving me your sweet snuggles—nestling up against my heart when you are tired.

The first couple of balloons blew out of our hands before you even noticed, but as we sent that last purple balloon floating into the sky, you raised your finger to point.  Daddy held you in his arms and pressed his cheek against yours, and we watched that purple speck rise up up up and then disappear—the beauty of this day, this year, lingering.

Thank you for making my heart so buoyant, so full of awe and gratitude when I think about you that it too soars heavenward.  Tonight I thank God that I am your mother, that I get to witness this beautiful little life unfolding.

Happy first birthday, my perfect little love.  Sleep tight.  I can't wait to see you first thing tomorrow morning.

Yours forever and ever and always,

Mama