One more

One more birthday post and then I'm ready to move on.  Actually not really ready.  I'm kind of sad the party is over and Addilyn is now a toddler.  Her birthday week was more emotional than I thought it would be, as it was hard for me to not be sad that time moves so quickly and she changes so fast.  I just want to go back to her tiny baby days once in awhile.  But this last week we've done some really fun things.  She's walking more and has been saying a few words which is a reminder that there is so much more exciting things to come! 
Addilyn did great at her party.  Happy, social and tear free except for the minute we tried to put her in the highchair to sing to her.  Huge tears!  Thankfully she was fine once I picked her up, so we sang happy birthday to her first, put her back in her chair and she was happy eating her cake.  Although there wasn't much eating.  Mostly playing with it and feeding Chris and I.  
Is this not the saddest little face?  How dare we try to sing and give her cake? 

 
(This one cracks me up.  Like she's telling me all about it.)

I've said it before, but I really feel like a one year birthday party is more for the parents than the baby.  It was so fun to celebrate with everyone.  Addilyn is lucky to have family and friends that love her and came to celebrate her.  There is something so special about watching other people love on the thing that you love the most.  I'm grateful for all these pictures to remember such a special, fun day.  

And you're probably grateful all the birthday posts are over.  Moving on.  
Promise.

The last . . . .

Thing I bought for myself.  This outfit.  The Old Navy shorts were $10, Target tee was $6 and sandals $9.  And it pretty much feels like wear pajamas.  Slightly see through pajamas I may add.  
Recipe I made.  These honey lime chicken taquitos.  I like simple, easy meals.  Chris on the other hand would be much more pleased if I cooked foods that only came from places like Fine Foods Specialist and other gourmet meals.  
Show that I watched.  Revenge.  I am finally catching up and am back to wanting to watch episode after episode.  I'll be sad when I'm finished with this season.  
Thing I wish I owned.  A monogram baseball hat.   I want this one in coral with grey letters.  
Dessert I ate.  These s'more bars.  Perfect summer dessert.  Please come eat the rest because I just ate one for breakfast dessert, which will probably be followed by lunch dessert, dinner dessert and bedtime snack.  Help.  
Thing that I worried about.  Addilyn getting hurt.  After our scary incident on her birthday I am doing better, but still struggling to not worry when we're swimming, at a park, she's climbing or taking all her wobbling little steps. 
Little photo bomber.  

Like mother like daughter

Most of Addilyn's life people comment on how she looks so much like Chris.  The older she gets, the more I agree. During some of our fertility procedures we joked about them messing something up and our baby not really being genetically our baby.  Really not funny, but we had to laugh some during those times, right?  I'm pretty sure we have nothing to worry about in regards to that.  Eyes, widow's peak, inability to sit still. Definitely Chris' baby.  

Thankfully I think Addilyn did get my little nose and apparently my flexibility.  

Let's hope she doesn't inherit my grumpy "natural" face too.  

Birthday Party Popcorn

 

In terms of food I only made two things for Addilyn's birthday party.  Cupcakes and popcorn.  I love this popcorn because you can make it ahead of time and it's easy, quick and cheap.  Plus it makes a lot.  I doubled this recipe and I think it was just enough for the 40 people we had.  (I of course ate my share before the party, plus a little after.) 

2 bags of popcorn  1 package almond bark (I actually used all but two squares, which was plenty)  1/2 cup cake mix (I used yellow, but funfetti would work too) sprinkles
Pop your popcorn.  Make sure you get all the unpopped kernels out.  (My dad chipped a tooth on a kernel one time when I made it and probably won't eat it ever again.  Oops.)  Melt your almond bark in the microvewave, stirring after a minute or so.  I add a little olive oil to make it easier to stir.  Add the cake mix once melted and mix.  Pour over the popcorn and stir.  Spread popcorn out on wax paper and cover with sprinkles.  I wish I would've added more sprinkles to mine because a lot of them end up falling off when I broke it up and put it in a bowl after an hour or so once it was the chocolate was hardened.  
This is super similar to this Fall Popcorn Mix and it wouldn't take any kind of baker's skills to make up your own.  Candy, chocolate, lots of variations.   

Things I didn't know about motherhood

The laundry.  I feel like I do laundry all the time.  And when I feel like I'm caught up I go into our bathroom and somehow the laundry basket it already full hours after thinking I was done.  I can't imagine having multiple kids and the amount of laundry there is.
Baby food.  I had intentions of making the majority of Addilyn's baby food.  I am not disappointed in myself that I didn't and really am okay feeding her store bought food.  I was excited about making it at first, and feel like especially in the case of vegetables it's cheaper.  It really isn't too hard, but buying baby food is way way easier. 
The amount of pictures.  I knew I'd take hundreds, but it truly feels impossible to not taken a million pictures. I am so aware that everyone thinks their baby is the cutest, but it's hard to not think that you truly do have the cutest baby there is.  
The dramatic.  I'd say I was an emotional person before, but don't feel like I was extremely dramtic. Motherhood has made me extremely dramatic.  If Addilyn doesn't take a nap, I immediately want to cry thinking that the day is going to be a disaster.  If she spends a day hardly eating anything other than yogurt melts and blueberries, I wonder how on earth she will ever grow.  Sometimes it's hard to think passed a moment or a current worry.  
Sleep.  I have always been a terrible sleeper.  It takes me forever to fall asleep and I wake up many times during the night.  I thought sleep deprivation wouldn't be so hard on me.  I was wrong.  Sleep deprivation from a baby is completely different.  I wonder if I will ever have a really good night of sleep again.  (Cue the dramatic). 
Marriage.  The adjustment to having a baby has been harder than I thought.  I wrote about it here, and do feel like we are getting into a groove with adding a baby, but it has taken work and lots more effort into communicating and working together than I expected.  
I'd do it again.  After my rough labor and even harder recovery I truly thought I would not want to do it again.  Add to that the extreme worry I fought the majority of my pregnancy and I thought I'd be happy not doing it all again.  Turns out I can't wait and pray even now that someday I get to do it again.  So so hard, but so worth every bit of worry, labor and recovery.  
Motivation.  Before having Addilyn I managed to work out every day and get a lot of things done, even though I was really busy. I'd squeeze a thirty minutes workout in when I was only home from work for 45 minutes before going to another commitment.  I thought I'd be able to keep doing that once having a baby. Turns out when I get 30 minutes while Addilyn is napping, or even an hour I don't want to work out.  It is so much harder to get myself motivated to work out and get things done when I have time to myself.  
Love.  I knew I'd love our baby.  I believed my friends with kids when they talked about how much they love their kids.  But the magnitude of how much I love Addilyn, that when I think about it I could cry, is something I couldn't have imagined before having her.  

This list could be so much longer.  I know I can think of many more I could write.  Moms - what did you not about motherhood? 

Polka Dot Birthday Party

I really enjoyed planning Addilyn's party and had so much fun making things for it.  I did so much of it slowly the last two months, which made it not stressful.  By far my favorite part of her party was the little dessert table and backdrop that I did.  

I made the tablecloth using this tutorial.  It was pretty easy and I love that I can use it again.  I found the white tablecloth on sale at Target for $8.  I bought five different paint colors, but you of course could use however many you wanted.  

For the background I had planned on cutting out a million circles, which would have been so dumb.  I thankfully found one of those huge hand punch things at Micheals, that was only $7 thanks to a 50% off coupon and SO worth it.  I just sewed them together and it really didn't take too long.  I think I cut out all the circles in less than an hour, and it didn't take more than a half hour to sew them.  I bought two packages of card stock for less than $10 and used that for all the things I made.  It was great because it was cheap and everything matched.  

I printed out Addilyn's monthly pictures, used the cardstock for backing and glued them to a ribbon to make a little banner.  Details about Addilyn's cute chalkboard print can be found here and was done by Erica at Inspired by Above.

I loved the cupcake toppers.  Chris helped me edit the picture using photoshop.  I printed them on cardstock and cut them out using little scissors, then taped them onto candy sticks.  I made the cupcakes using a box mix, but did make the frosting myself.  It was my first time using those pastry decorating bags and it really wasn't that hard.  

 

I'll have to do a post sharing more pictures about this, because I love it.  I had guests write in the board book "Guess How Much I Love You," just like we had them do when Addilyn was first born using the book "On the Night you were Born."  It will be so sweet to have that to read over and over.  

Dessert popcorn.  So good and easy.  I wanted polka dot cups but couldn't find any so I bought a package of little white circle stickers for a dollar, plus cute sticker/tags that I wrote on for the center of the cups.

 Most of our party was outside and thankfully it was a beautiful day.  I'm not sure what we would've done if it rained.  I had a few decorations for our outside.  I bought two sets of these pinwheel and puff balls on clearance for a $1 at JCPenney a long time ago and they worked perfect.  I had a little bit of the polka dot banner left to hang from the deck, plus a few balloons we had filled.  (Don't mind the crying, pantless baby.)

Addilyn's outfit details here

A friend made that chalkboard for me for one of my baby showers and it was perfect for her party.  I don't have a good picture once the food got here but I found these little chalkboard clips for cheap at Michaels that I wrote what each dish was.  (Thankfully Chris' aunts all brought a side, and we bought Italian beef and there was plenty of food!)  

I did not want to be responsible for making Addilyn's cake and happily found a perfect one at Jewel for $7.  They had a polka design and I just picked the frosting colors and it matched perfectly.  I made her little banner by cutting out triangles, writing letters with a Sharpie and sewing it together with my sewing machine. I loved it! 

The little banner on her high chair was made with cardstock.  I cut out the letters and glued them on with a glue gun because the paper was so thick.  I used a glue gun to glue the ribbon on too.  

I was really happy with how everything turned out and how the party went.  It was fun, but I'm pretty sure we won't be doing another big birthday party for many, many years!!  I still have so many pictures to go through, so expect another blog post of party pictures!