Scarlett's One!

My baby turned one on March 31st. I know everyone says it, but I really don't know where this past year went. She's been such a joy and has brought a sweetness to our home and we've loved every second we've had with her. To celebrate we decided we'd invite a very small group of friends over to have some cake and ice cream. I wanted to make Scarlett a cake decorated with fondant so I called a friend who is so talented with it and she gave me a couple of lessons. The cake took four days to make. The first was making the fondant. The second was coloring the fondant and cutting out the stars and flowers to dry. The third was baking the red velvet cakes and crumb coating them. The fourth was 5 hours of fondant and piping. My friend came over on the fourth day to help me through all the fondant decorating. She was so much help and pointed out things I wouldn't have even thought about. I owe her such a big thank you!

So this is me doing some of the coloring.

We got some pre-party pictures of Scarlett playing in the play tent. She loves crawling through the tube.
I wanted to throw this picture in just for reference. This is the day we brought Scarlett home from the hospital. Incidentally, my favorite pictures of both my kids when they are coming home from the hospital are the ones with their dad holding them. Robert has the same smile in both. He's such a good daddy.
So this is our daughter now, one year later. I can't believe how much she's grown! I think she's just a tiny bit adorable, too.
She had no idea what was going on, but she was really happy. She loved her dollar store party hat so much she loved it to death. I think she actually loved two or three of them to death!
Right before the party started I decided that the cake needed to be a little more girly. I was going for a western/cowgirl sort of look. After all, she's a Texas baby. I didn't think it looked girly enough so I piped on some more butter-cream blossoms. I still don't know if I made it too busy or not.
This is the finished cake. I feel like it's time for confessions here. I still don't know how I feel about it. I worked a ton on it so I am proud of what I did, but I don't know if I love it. I love how creative you can be with cakes, but I really don't know if I hit the nail on the head with this one. Also, as I mentioned above, it's red velvet. I got the recipe online and it was highly rated. Unfortunately, it wasn't very good. I followed the recipe perfectly and tasted it and thought it lacked something but trusted it would bake up to taste better. Nope, it didn't. It was edible, but definitely not a true red velvet cake. None of the kids who came to the party finished their slices. Ouch!
Scarlett blowing out the candle. Actually, here comes another confession, the candle wouldn't light. So we propped a match upright and sang "Happy Birthday!" really quickly. Scarlett loved every second of it and had no idea how lame her parents were.
She ate a fair amount of her birthday cake. I think it's because she'd never had cake and didn't know there could be better!
Does she look like she's had fun???

She got a couple of sweet presents from our friends. A shapes puzzle and a couple of board books. They were so perfect for her and she's still playing with them every day.

So at one Scarlett is 20 pounds and 30 inches long. She crawls so fast it's almost scary. She can walk the length of our living room, but she doesn't have enough confidence to do it without walking toward me. She stands up all on her own and walks all around the house using furniture and walls to help her. She has three teeth all on the bottom and I think they make for an adorable smile. She is almost always happy. She reaches for loves whenever I walk by, loves to play with my lips and eyelashes and has the sweetest laugh that you can hear through the whole house. She is, however, a bit of a diva. She's figured out that whining gets attention (because I want it to stop, not because I'm concerned for her.) She'll be giggling one second and then the next she's face-down spread eagle on the floor throwing a tantrum. If I ignore this, which I usually do, I just watch to make sure she doesn't hurt herself, she works herself into such a tizzy that she'll start crawling in tight circles crying. It looks like a dog chasing it's tail. It gets me every time and I start laughing. She stops immediately and looks at me as if I've wounded her. She'll then start grinning and giggling with me and forget why she was mad in the first place.

One of my favorite things that Scarlett does is the way she smiles for her daddy. If Robert's home when the kids get up I take Scarlett to him to see before he has to go. If she doesn't see him and hears him leave she'll stay by the door he left from and just cry. It's so sad and cute. Her bottom lip juts out and her little nose turns red. I have to hold her and whisper to her that he'll be home for her to calm down. Anyway, when she sees her dad in the morning her whole face lights up. Robert says, "Hey, Honey!" and she just kicks and reaches for him. I love that she's crazy for her dad.

Scarlett loves to be outside and play in the grass. I can't keep the girl clean for the life of me. She sort of reminds me of myself when I was a kid. The dirtier the play, the better. Anyway, she loves to roll balls back and forth with Nate or any other buddy. She's a social little thing and loves to be in groups of people. I think the person she loves most in the world though, is her brother. He can get her smiling and happy faster than anyone else. He can also aggravate her faster than anyone else, but that's just being siblings. They play so well together. Nate wants her to start walking so badly that he holds her hands and walks slowly around the house with her. It makes me so nervous! She has several push toys and Nate will play with her and run around the house with her as she pushes. Their favorite thing is to race. Nate will throw something and they'll both chase after it. Nate always wins unless I tell him to give her a chance, but she couldn't care less. She just wants to play with her brother.

She babbles like crazy. She loves to talk and is always talking. When it's time for bed or naps it's not Nate keeping them up, it's Scarlett. The other night Robert and I stood at the door laughing because she was standing in her crib giving Nate some serious speech. Nate was trying to go to sleep and was asking her to please be quiet. I feel like this was a glimpse into my future. I do love her talking, though. She says "Da da" the most.

This is turning into quite the post, but I want to get everything down because I forget things so fast. Life takes away your memory when you get busy. It just seems like the older I get, the busier I get and I don't think it will ever slow down. I have to remind myself to stop and enjoy the moments of everyday and that is what I'm trying to do now with Scarlett. She's been so good to me from the moment I got pregnant with her. She did make me sick but I was active my whole pregnancy. Some say I played better volleyball when I was pregnant! I didn't gain a ton of weight with her so I felt better during the pregnancy. She was one day late and I was induced and she was born less than 5 hours later. She was out in half a push and I was feeling fantastic. I could have gone home that night. The first night she got home from the hospital she only woke up once during the night to eat. By five weeks she was sleeping through the night completely. In fact, the first night she did that we were on vacation with Robert's parents in San Antonio. We shared a hotel room and I was awake all night worrying that she would wake everyone up when she had to eat. The joke was on me! After that it was like I hadn't even just had a baby. She was so sweet. She smiled and giggled early. She didn't have any acid reflux problems like Nate. She switched from nursing to formula like a dream. This girl has never missed a beat even with every curve ball I throw her. We switched to cow's milk on her birthday and she loves it! Nate took some convincing but she's almost downed an entire gallon by herself in less than a week. I really believe that she was a missing link in our family. We are so happy to have her. She reminds us everyday that life is fun and simple if we let it be. She doesn't sweat the small stuff. I don't know if that will always be her disposition, but it is now and I'm trying to learn from her. We love having her around. What life would be like without her now that we have her I can't imagine. I know Heavenly Father knew what kind of baby I needed when he sent her to me. I thank him every day for her. So here's to a lifetime of more birthdays with Scarlett. We love you baby!