Lots of Wine: Lola's 1st Birthday

It was a weekend full of birthdays! We went to Julia Olson's 1st birthday party on Saturday. It was the first birthday party Lola had been to (besides my dad's 60th birthday when she was 3 weeks old, I don't count that). For those of you who don't know, Julia and Lola were born on the same day - January 24th. I met Julia's mom, Elizabeth, at the gym when we were both pregnant. We had both been going to the same gym for a while, but we had never actually met. I'm not very social at the gym - I put on my headphones and tune everyone out. Elizabeth and I both happened to be in the locker room at the same time one day and I saw her little belly and asked her if she was pregnant (thank goodness she was!). She was due 3 weeks after me, on Feb 14th, but Julia came exactly 3 weeks early. Elizabeth and I still go to the gym together. She motivates me to do cardio because we chat the whole time. Otherwise, I'm lucky if I can get 10 minutes of cardio in before I get bored out of my mind and move on to the weight room to lift (which I absolutely love).

Sorry, back to birthdays... My mom came up Saturday morning and we spent the whole day baking/decorating the cake and cupcakes and cleaning the house. Then I took a break to go to Julia's birthday, then came back to keep decorating/cleaning. Ryan was in charge of the food and he got everything ready on Sunday morning while mom and I got things set up.

We had a good turnout, around 22 people. Lola did great. She did get grumpy when she was opening presents, because she wanted to hold/play with what was opened, but we had to take it from her so she could open the next present. I can't really blame her! We were trying to get through presents quickly so she could move on to cake before she got really hungry and tired. She didn't make as big of a mess with the cake as I anticipated. But then again she isn't a great eater and she pretty much takes one bite at a time and doesn't stuff a whole lot in her mouth at once. She did manage to eat an entire cupcake, which in turn prevented her from taking an afternoon nap! She always naps for at least 2 hours, but she was not interested at all. She screamed and screamed and finally I gave up. I think she wanted to come back downstairs and play with all of her presents, because when I got her up and brought her downstairs, she made a beeline for the gifts.

This is the only picture we got of her where you can see her entire shirt. And yes, she is holding a stack of baby food containers. She loves to play with them and wouldn't put them down!

It's my party and I'll scream if I want to! Ryan took away a gift she just opened and she wasn't too happy.

April got Lola a stuffed squirrel. Actually, this is April's squirrel from growing up. I have a stuffed squirrel that looks very similar, although it is much more worn out than this one. My stuffed squirrel, named 'squirrel', was not my favorite toy when I was little but became my 'lovey' as I got older for some reason. I even took squirrel to college with me, where some of my roomates and dorm friends (you know who you are), were very mean to squirrel. I found him hanging by his neck from the ceiling and I found him in the microwave when I would get home from class. Not nice!! :) So April decided that Lola needed a squirrel friend too.