The Big One!!!

What a weekend!! I am so incredibly glad I worked so hard last week getting the house in order--it made for a very stress-free weekend, and as a result we had loads of fun. Well, except for the part where Anja kept getting injured... if this is toddlerhood, I'm not sure I'm digging it. On Friday (a last-minute Annie Car Day) on the way home from picking Martin up from work, Anja was reeeaaallllyyyyy cranky. In fact, she'd been pretty much a giant crab all day. Finally, while we were eating dinner I grew suspicious of an ear infection because she kept rubbing at her face--so much that it looked kind of bruised! Now, earlier in the day she'd had a little fall and had hit her mouth on a chair. I was right there, I saw it happen--and I KNOW that she didn't hit her whole face when she fell. But I started wondering if maybe I just hadn't seen it well enough and that maybe she'd really banged her face. But I thought it was more likely an ear infection, especially when she just kept crying for no reason. So I took her to the Urgent Care, and sure enough, my intuition was right. So back on the Pink Stuff we go! So that was Friday.

On Saturday, while she still probably wasn't feeling the greatest, I put her in the bathroom with Martin while he was showering so I could do something else (I don't remember what.) I heard a big thud come from the bathroom and ran in--she had fallen into the tub! She had a big bump on her forehead, but was fine. Poor thing though! And she was all wet, too. Then about ten minutes later, the dog came running through the kitchen, jumped over her, and caught the top of her head with a toenail--and gave her a little scratch on her head, which was minor, but she was very upset. Again--poor baby! THEN, on Sunday while we were having lunch, I was stupidly scooping food from a pan onto our plates at the table while she sat on Martin's lap, and she reached out and touched the hot pan!!! We are such bad parents!!!!!!! Poor little Anja Pie, just one traumatic event after another.

But other than that, the weekend was great. We worked on the house all day on Saturday (except for the small amount of time we spent out shopping, where I got a super cute brown dress and a super cute red sweater from Motherhood, both for very cheap Sale prices!!!!) and then in the evening went to John and Elisabeth's wedding!! It was beautiful! And I'm so happy for them--they are a really perfect couple. Anja only had one meltdown when she wanted a bottle and I'd left them out in the car. Other than that, she was pretty content. After the wedding we had to go home to get the gift and by the time we'd driven back from our house to the reception (about four blocks) she was already almost asleep. So we dropped our gift off, got ourselves Vanilla Chais at Vienna, and came on home. I was sad to miss out on the reception, but bedtime is bedtime.

And thennnnn.... SUNDAY! HER FIRST BIRTHDAY! We went to 7:30 mass where Anja was the best she's EVER been at mass. She was AWESOME. Sooooo happy the whole time. Afterward we were going to go for doughnuts at Krispy Kreme, but we decided instead to go to Target and get a little box of them and eat them at the Starbucks there. We figured it'd be cheaper and we also needed a couple things from there. It was a nice little breakfast for us! People came over at 4:00 to celebrate, and wouldn't you know it--she was asleep! We finally woke her up at 4:30 and I thought she might be a crab, but she was sooooooo happy. And going against the warning that all babies have meltdowns on their first birthdays, she had SO MUCH FUN. She loved it when everyone sang to her, she loved all her presents, and the only disappointing thing is that she didn't make a mess of her cake. Oh well. Maybe next year! I am SO GLAD we had such a party for her. I know we'll never make such a big deal out of any other birthday for any of our kids--it'll always be little family get-togethers, which is great, but I wanted to go all-out just once. I think everyone had a good time! I hope they did, anyway. I hope nobody felt awkward not knowing everyone in the room, and I hope that Martin and I were good party hosts. It was sure a fun crowd anyway!

Anja got some GREAT gifts from all our very generous friends and relatives. Funnily, her very favorite was the possum puppet that Martin got for her!! You can kind of see it in this picture. It is a really cute puppet. Seriously though, people are so sweet and generous! Maybe it's because Anja is so cute. My dad mentioned that the parties we throw always include such an eclectic crowd, and I think he's right! I like it too. I never had my camera, but I wish someone had taken more pictures of our guests because I would've liked to have had them.

Another cool thing that Anja got was a bowl full of her first pets:

I think their names are Bacon and Cha-Cha, but I'm not sure which is which and how the names came about can be blamed on Martin and Kim. The one whose face is kind of covered has these huge cheeks. They are really fun, and Anja adores them. Martin got up with her first this morning and evidently she LOVED to see them first thing. I love it that she loves animals so much!

After the party we went to Arni's with AnnLaura and Aurelio. It was really nice to just be able to chill out and have a relaxing dinner with our babies. Here again you can see Anja loving her possum. Arni's turns out to be the perfect place for us to go to eat--we can get a cup of soup for her (last night was Chicken & Dumpling) and she can have the ham and cheese from my salad and it works out nicely. Last night she started drinking from a straw! We'd never thought to try it before, but we offered her a cup of water with a straw and she knew exactly what to do. I guess it's one of those weird human instincts... though I don't know that they had straws back in caveman times.

In other news, this weekend we're taking a trip down to Tennessee! This was decided just last week when Martin was tying up the ends of one job and figuring out the beginning of the other. He's got a lot of unused vacation, so he's taking off Friday and Monday and we're going to drive down to see his grandmother. I have only been down to see her once, just after we got engaged. That was also the last time Martin's been down, which means she's never met Anja! I'm really looking forward to going down. We wanted to go this summer but it just wasn't in the cards. We tried a couple of different times to work it out and it just couldn't happen. So I'm very glad to be going down this weekend. We're going to leave on Thursday night at Anja's bedtime and drive "through the night" which is only about half the night because it's not a very long trip. But that way Anja is guaranteed to be asleep, which will make it an easier trip for all of us. We'll do the same thing coming back on Sunday and then have Monday to recooperate. Hopefully we'll be able to pop down to Nashville to see Joannie while we're there too!

So a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our one-year-old!!! I'm glad she had such a wonderful day.