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Rivers first birthday was two weeks ago today. We still call her 'baby'. Not long ago I had to quiz Cumorah on her sister's name because I wasn't sure if she even remembered what it was. Well 'baby' is now one year old and not as much of a baby. Sometime before the next baby arrives we'll have to start using Rivers' proper name.


The day of Rivers' birthday, we invited our friends Ryan and Amy over for dinner and had a splendid little party. My favorites of the night (in the food category) were Ryan's salad (very yummy, I have a thing for green salads with strawberries and mildly stinky cheese) and the frozen yogurt that we finally did get to freeze in the maker, despite the lack of abundant ice. It's made with plain yogurt, a bit of sugar and some optional vanilla. If you haven't ever tried this kind of simple frozen yogurt, you must. It's the real thing and so so yummy. Just don't expect it to taste anything like ice cream.


My favorites of the night (not in the food category) were Rivers ultimate cupcake breakdown and the present that Cumorah picked out and gave to her little sister. Being Sunday, Rivers had had a long day and very little napping. When we lit the candle on her little cupcake she went for the flame, and of course her hand was suddenly, surprisingly (to her) snacthed away. She completely lost it and didn't want anything to do with her birthday cupcake for a little while. Mommy had to hold her and we ended up having to get a binky out even though the binky has now been strictly assigned to crib duty and crib duty only. When Rivers calmed down enough, Cumorah blew out the candle.






I'm kind of strict about what my kids eat when they are babies. They're pretty much not allowed sweets at all. So the first birthday cupcake is a pretty big deal. Actually, Rivers got to have a major sugar sweet the night before her birthday. We walked the mile down the street to Snookies to celebrate with ice cream. Cumorah wore her princess helmet and 'rode' her bike (that Mommy was pushing) while Rivers rode in the backpack way up high on her Daddy. When we got there we pulled out our trusty bibs, and Rivers got her very own adorable, tiny kiddie ice cream cone, while Cumorah graduated this year to a small.




Mmmmm. This is pretty yummy, Mom. (She only had two of the marshmallow petals, Mommy gave the rest to Cumorah.)



I so love that the helping hands in these pictures are not Mommy hands. They're cute little dimpled 2 year old hands of a very helpful and interested big sister.

Unfortunately, something happened (I'm not sure what) that set Rivers off again before she could eat her first bite of actuall cupcake. Yep, Sundays evenings are a little difficult sometimes.



The only gift Rivers received from Brian and I was a small set of homemade blocks that Brian cut out from wood scraps we have. I sanded them, (Remember the last time I sanded building blocks Dad? I don't but I've seen the picture. I'm not sure I was any happier about doing it this time, but I love my daughters very much and they like stacking things.) and then I painted them with watered down acrylic paint to just give them kind of a color stain. I figure, she's one, she just doesn't really care that much about presents. Besides, Cumorah got all the toys when she was little and we just don't need anymore. Fortunately, she did get some nice fun presents from her grandparents. Her favorite present (before Auntie Amy's super cool shape sorter arrived) was the $1 ball that Cumorah picked out for her at Wal-Mart. Brian helped her wrap it. It was nice to see Cumorah give Rivers a present. I think it's good for her to start learning to give, of course she did kind of take all of Rivers' other presents.

As is now becoming tradition, the first birthday hat was not actually entirely complete on the birthday, but the day after the birthday. Rivers did not get the candle on her hat until the following day. So, just like we did with Cumorah, we gave her a cupcake the evening after the birthday for a good cupcake-eating-and-birthday-hat-wearing photo shoot. Cumorah was very much into it as she got to wear her first birthday hat and eat a cupcake, too. Everyone was in a much better mood than the night before, and Rivers was even so excited about seeing her friends the marshmallows again that she walked about six or seven steps in a row to come and show me. She had only been standing and taking one or two steps at a time before that.


This cracks me up. Cumorah was being 'so careful' with the cupcake that she brought out and set on the little red table for Rivers.

The birthday hat turned out a little bit big this time around, but it makes it even cuter. Such a huge fluffy birthday cake on her head. We've gotten lots of compliments out in public. We even had a group of grandparents stop and ask if they could take a picture of her. The blue and the pink yarns are the leftovers from her baby blanket and her baby hat that I made for her to wear home from the hospital.









I'm so glad I have two little girls. It is so fun to see them growing together and playing together. I hope that they always stay such good friends. Though I wouldn't be sorry to see the take-the-toy-from-the-baby game and the angry-baby-screaming-while-biting-back episodes go.





Here is Rivers at six months. And here is Rivers at a year. Why does time go by so fast?
At six months the big accomplishment was sitting. Now Rivers is walking. She still does a lot of crawling, especially when she wants to get somewhere fast, but she has been practicing all week and is getting really good at walking. She walks all over the place at home. She's not quite ready for walking in a public restroom, though.



Rivers has quite the impressive vocabulary. She started mimicking sounds from a very early age and is pretty good at it by now. Today's new word was 'bubble'. She also says 'hat', 'ball', 'diaper', 'nana' (as in banana), 'book', 'shoe', 'star' (which is what we call the girls' pinwheels) and the cutest thing in the world is to hear her say 'dad, dad, daddy' when the back door opens and Brian comes home.

Rivers gives us lots of kisses. They are huge open mouthed 'ahhhhhh' type kisses and I'm always a little bit nervous that she's going to bite my lips off. But sweet those kisses are.

Rivers is a head banger. Didn't really expect to see that in any of my kids. I've mentioned before about how she flops over a lot when she's upset, but in recent months she has acquired the habit of banging her head along with her body flop when she is upset about something. She bangs it on the floor, the table, a chair, Cumorah, me, the grocery cart, whatever is closest. Fortunately, she doesn't really bang it repeatedly. I think I would be more worried about it if she did. It really bothers Brian though. He wants to buy her a helmet.

Rivers is strong and healthy, for the most part. She does snore something awful, poor baby (and poor Cumorah). She has just always been congested. (But so was I until I was about twelve and we finally got my chronic sinus troubles cleared up.) She is 29.5 inches high and 18lbs 12oz at present. Which is 50-75% for height and 10-25% for weight. Her iron level is a little low, but she's taking her liquid vitamin with iron really well. Cumorah's iron was low when she was one too, but she wouldn't take the vitamin.

Rivers is a very, very happy little girl. Rivers is also a very, very dramatic-the-world-as-we-know-it-is-ending-and-all-is-lost-and-it's-your-fault-how-could-you-be-so-cruel kind of little girl. Shall we say, the pendulum swings wide and often.

Rivers is becoming a very independent child. I have not been able to spoon feed her anything for at least two months now. She makes a huge mess, but fortunately she is actually starting to get a tiny bit better at the whole spoon thing. I think it's great that she is doing it by herself and all, I'd be having her practice anyway, but it drives me crazy that I can't even coach her on how to hold the spoon a little bit. It just isn't effective when I try to. Did I mention the drama and the head banging?

Rivers is my precious little girl, and I'm so glad she is part of our family.