Lizzie's First Birthday

Our Birthday Guests:

John Allen Brown, Jim & Gayle Brown, Connor and Effie White,
Emily, Daddy, Gran-Gran, and the birthday girl. (Mommy is taking the picture.)

Birthday Prep

Emily and Mommy prepared some apple cinnamon cupcakes with cream cheese icing the day before.

Birthday event

We started our Sunday party by meeting up at a Wendy's for lunch and cupcakes. Big Sister helped to hand out the cupcakes to everyone. Lizzie wasn't shy about her cake at all. She enjoyed it.

We opened some presents and headed out for our 'special trip'.


After an unfortunate series of events. (see below), we ended up at a nice playground in Kennesaw.

Everyone got a little face time with the birthday girl.

Her favorite activity was to try out the slides.

We were rounding out the day and the ice cream truck came by giving everyone a special treat.

Some facts about Lizzie B
So being a whole year old doesn't seem to phase her at all. She's eating solid foods such as toast, cheese, rice, asparagus, cooked carrots, etc. Actually, we have yet to find a food she won't eat. (Or anything she won't stick in her mouth.) She's got five teeth. She's huge too. She's wearing 18month size clothes, size 3 shoe, and she's weighing in at 15lbs. at least. It feels like 50 in my arms! She's very wiggly and doesn't like to sit still. She can be very funny though.

Lizzie and Em like to pillow fight. We call it Sumo Baby Pillow Wrestling. They each get a pillow and run into each other. Sometimes Daddy gets involved and then it's just crazy. She likes to pull folded clothes out of a laundry basket or drawer, especially when I've got Em in the tub and can't stop her.

Oddly enough, Lizzie is pretty sound sensitive. I've tried to condition her to sleep through noise with a noise machine, the washer/dryer, and Em and I playing in the next room...but she'll still wake up with the smallest sound. Ah well, I guess she'll be a light sleeper. Oh, but she can sleep through Daddy's drumming....

She enjoys bead mazes, stacking and shape-sorting toys. She also likes her stuffed animals, her bedtime seahorse and the ones that have this terry cloth type covering, caterpillar and dinosaur. Any of the others she can take or leave. She's started trying to color by rubbing her fist with a crayon in it on the paper. She's gotten lucky a couple of times getting marks on the paper. Above all else though, dancing is her favorite activity. She's got lots of moves from swaying to bouncing, spinning, etc.

I like to lay on the floor and let her wallow on me. She likes to run up and flip over my legs or my tummy. Then she'll jump up and run around for another go. Hide and seek is fun too. If I'm under a blanket, she'll squat down and peer sideways under the edge with this silly grin. It never fails to put a smile on my face.

I hope you've enjoyed a look into Lizzie B! I hope we can spend some time with you soon.

And now, for the birthday that almost wasn't....
We had planned a group trip to the Atlanta Zoo on this Sunday because they were having a special $5 day. Little did I know that this was an annual event so the entire city flocked to the zoo. Parking was bumper to bumper for 10 blocks in circumference of the front gate. The streets were just as bad. We had a three car caravan and just did an immediate about face back to Kennesaw. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Turns out the freeway going north had a large accident since we got off of it and was now backed up for miles. I think we each took a different route to get up to the playground but once there, it was lots of fun.