I had too much on my plate this week to do a good job with my photos. This is why I don’t ever join those 365 projects – if the best I can do some days is a blurry photo of what I had for breakfast there is no way I can handle much more. We spent 2 days stuck at home with a broken car and one day stuck at home because of naps – I swear at least one person in the house was sleeping all day on Saturday – but hopefully next week we’ll do more fun things. Evan has been totally obsessed with The Fishy Movie, so maybe we’ll go to the aquarium and find some Nemos.

Sunday:

She rips off the bib so she just eats naked now.

I'm kissing her, she's kissing the baby in the phone

Lego basketball

Monday:

Laying on the floor at Stroller Strides, avoiding doing more plank

Sriracha makes even organic vegan miso ramen delicious

She's reading that book by osmosis

Tuesday:

Goal setting at Stroller Strides - now I have real life friends to hold me accountable!

She's a social media expert already

Someone got out of bed and into trouble

Wednesday:

Send help

Grocery shopping. I bought way too much healthy stuff.

Cowls are so hot right now. Check out my new toddler neck warmer.

Thursday:

You would think a blind person picked out her clothes, but no, I did.

What, you think the angel gets to just sit on her ass all year after Christmas?

She's extremely fast when she's half naked.

Friday:

Diet yet delicious - egg beaters, carn balance tortilla, sriracha, blueberries, coffee with skim milk and sugar free vanilla syrup

Nap time project

Evan asked please so nicely - and it was on clearance

Saturday:

Donut shaped donut machine. Delicious.

Whatcha doin' Mama?

Geeze, does that kid EVER wear normal clothes?!

Air-poppeded popcorn sprinkled with parmesan. Perfect.

 The rest of the weekend will be spent doing dishes and laundry, since somehow I didn’t manage to do enough of those things during the week and I’m practically buried in them. HOW do two small people get so many things so dirty? Hopefully next week all the people and all the cars will be healthy and we take our mess somewhere I don’t have to clean it all up.

I’m not upset about my teeny tiny baby girl turning one. I understand it had to happen eventually. And really, she is still so TEENY TINY I can pretend she’s a baby when we rock in the glider or when I creep into her room to take pictures of her while she sleeps. (Creeeeeeeeepy!)  But mostly I’m ok with her being one because she is super duper awesome and cool. She is way cooler at 12 months old than I have ever been in my life. I mean, she can TOTALLY wear knit leggings.

Caroline still loves food – all food, any food, all day – but especially chicken nuggets and cheese. She learned how to use a sippy cup (today!) but is having some trouble with not letting all the milk/water fall out of her face. I’m going to have to find something REALLY delicious to convince her it’s worth swallowing. Maybe she’d like some hot cocoa and schnapps.

As much as she eats, she has definitely cut back on her nursing schedule, although she refuses to drop the midnight feeding. I KNOW she doesn’t need it – sometimes she goes from midnight until noon the next day without nursing – but she wakes up every single night and is so much easier just to pop a boob in her mouth than to argue. In case you didn’t know, arguing with toddlers almost never works. We are leaving her with my parents (more on THAT later) in March, so my goal is to have her sleeping through the night by then, if only because I don’t want them to refuse to babysit ever again. I’m also debating weaning her before then, or at least mostly weaning her, so I don’t have to do much pumping while I’m gone. (I have SUCH. MIXED. FEELINGS. I think I need a whole separate post for them.) But for now, she’s still a nursing champ.

But besides the waking up, she is an awesome sleeper. If she doesn’t fall asleep when we rock I can leave her in the crib with a book or a toy and she’ll play herself to sleep. Oh my God, do you hate me SO MUCH right now? Seriously, she is at an insanely easy age, so even when she’s having a clingy day she is still a darling child. Today at Target a woman literally couldn’t stop herself from trying to hug her, although when I looked alarmed she was like “Oh no! That was inappropriate! I’m so sorry, she’s just so gorgeous and she’s SMILING at me!”

It’s true. It’s impossible not to love her when she smiles at you. I love her so much I forgave her for breaking my iPhone.

Favorite things include: iPhones, the dog, the cats, her brother, putting trash in her mouth, cheese, cookies, spaghetti with meat sauce, boobs, her fancy patent leather shoes, blankies, forts, sleeping, bath time, dinosaurs, biting things, giving huge slobbery open mouth kisses and throwing herself head first off the couch.

Least favorite things are falling on her face, diaper changes, the vacuum cleaner, watching me leave the house, being buckled in the shopping cart and when I fish the trash out of her mouth so she doesn’t choke to death. Such a TERRIBLE MOTHER.

I don't like this sticker, Mom.

No, seriously, get it off me or I will CUT YOU.

Ha ha, just kidding. *BABY GANG SIGNS*

C'mon, do you want YOUR age in giant numbers on your chest?

Ok, FINE, if you won't help I'll do it myself.

Here you go! I fixed it!

Showing off the baby gun show

OH FOR THE LOVE. Now the tutu AND the sticker?

Dude, do YOU know what's wrong with this woman? --- Just smile and nod, kid, smile and nod and plot our takeover.

12 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter, as usual)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
Imitates others’ activities – Her new favorite game is taking very important phone calls on my iPhone. I’m expecting a year’s supply of cheese to show up on my doorstep any minute.
Indicates wants with gestures – Gestures, screeching pterodactyl noises, same difference.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
Takes a few steps – Runs, climbs, roundhouse kick’s me in the face.
Says one word besides “mama” or “daddy” – She can say “mama”, “daddy”, “kitty”, “hi”, and things that sound like “I got it” and “all done!” but I wouldn’t swear those last two weren’t my imagination. She also puts words together and says “Hi daddy!!” in the absolute cutest way ever.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
Walks alone – See above
Scribbles with a crayon – She still put too much stuff her in mouth to let her have crayons…unless I want rainbow-colored poop in the morning.
Says two words besides “mama” or “dada” – See above. I sort of think I’m imagining ALL the talking, but since BabyCenter assures me it IS possible she’s talking I like to believe I just have a super genius baby.

The Theme: Winter sparkle snowflake party, with glitter, pale pink and blue accents
The Location: The entire first floor of my house

This post is going to be HUGE, so if you have no interest at all in Caroline’s party please come back in a few days when it’s been bumped off the front page. I don’t want to put in a page break and have people think I’m trying to trick them into more page views. I get my page views the honest way – exploiting my children and friends!

The Decorations:

Dining room

Tree branch sprayed with snow-in-a-can

Ruffled crepe paper trees from this tutorial found on Pinterest

Living Room

Snowflakes cut from printer paper (Google “snowflake templates” for ideas)

My clothes pin photo display re-purposed as Caroline’s year in photos display!

Epsom salt in mason jars to look like snow

Glitter play dough party favors (more details in this post), yarn wreath, mirror frosted with snow-in-a-can

Yarn wreath, $1 picture frame ornament from Target

Chandelier decorated with dollar store garland & ornaments

Doily garland

The orange high chair didn’t match my theme, but a paper table cloth and a little tulle fixed it!

Fake snow everywhere!

The Food:

Hot cocoa and cocktail bar – the Keurig made it SO EASY!

I bought every single Christmas mug at Goodwill

Mini marshmallows, egg nog, powdered sugar, crushed candy canes, vanilla syrup, pink sprinkles, whipped cream, coconut flakes. Also on the bar: dark and milk hot cocoa, cider, Bailey’s, vanilla vodka, coconut rum, peppermint schnapps, mini candy canes.

Cucumber sandwiches, candy cane blossoms, red peppers & dip

Smoked salmon, dill & cream cheese on herb bread

Cupcakes (from a box!), my favorite frosting, edible sugar paper snowflakes bought at Stop & Shop

Sparkling cranberry brie bites. You know how sometimes you seen an idea on Pinterest and think “yeah, there’s no way that idea is going to be as awesome in real life”? This one was JUST AS AWESOME.

Thumbprint cookies, gooey vanilla sparkle cookies, fruit & dip, sugar cookies, ginger cookies, mini pastas on sticks with vodka, marinara, and alfredo sauce.

Coconut snowballs

Cream cheese mints, lemon meringues

The pasta on sticks was a great idea… for grown ups. Next time I’ll get less pointy things.

Milk bottle snow men. Not quiet as cute as on the interwebs, but still cute.

Lemon cake (more boxed mix!) tinted 3 shades of pink

Tiny cake baked in a tomato can, covered in sprinkles & topped with “Caroline” written in chocolate

Don’t even THINK about taking her cake away

The Fun:

Glitter play dough & cookie cutters on a kid-sized table

All the planned activities in the world can’t stop the kids from getting every toy out of the toy box

DIY pull string pinata (more here) was a hit, even though it didn’t work exactly as planned. I had to shake most of the candy out after the ribbon holding it up broke, but the kids didn’t care one little bit.

DIY snowglobes were cuter in theory than in reality. They were kind of leaky and some of the trees dyed the water purple and the glue was messy, but everyone went home with one!

Sharing strawberries with a friend

Refusing to wear her hair bow

Dance party!

These two are TROUBLE

Playing with Grandma

Somebody got a pony for her birthday! (She’s kind of scared of it though)

Family photos with two kids – there is ALWAYS someone not looking.

Holy crap, that was ridiculously long. I think I got all the links and recipes in there but if you’re looking for something let me know. My Pinterest board for the party (with most of the ideas I did use and some really good ones I didn’t get around to) can be found here.  I’m sorry most of the photos are terrible – it gets dark REALLY early here so I had to use the flash after the first 30 minutes of the party. It was definitely a great time and I know Caroline enjoyed herself. I hear everyone’s kids slept really well on Saturday night so I think they ran off all the sugar I pumped into them before they went home. Thank you to everyone who came and especially to my mother-in-law Carol who flew all the way from Ohio just to help me make the food and watch Little Evan for a few hours!

And Happy Birthday Caroline!

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There’s no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.

Oh hi, who wants to talk about dessert? Or drinks? Or maybe holiday parties? How about a fancy sparkly dessert themed holiday party I’m throwing for my baby girl when she turns one this month? I’ve got myself on a pretty strict baking schedule to get as much as possible done in advance, so my house is FULL of sweets right now. After the cake near-disaster at Evan’s 2nd birthday, I decided maybe fancy frosting is little outside my skill set, in the same way running a marathon is outside my skill set. You think, come on, it’s just running. Anyone can run. Here, let me just run right into the kitchen and make a cake worthy of its own TLC special. (more…)

To Ohio, to Columbus, Thanksgiving, to Connecticut, CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAS.

Sunday:

DIY in car entertainment center. It worked like a CHAMP.

Rest stops are EXCITING

We were at the in-laws for less than 2 hours before the kids got to open their Christmas presents.

Monday:

This is the ONLY TIME she slept all week.

How many braids can I fit on my head? (Answer: four, this time)

Learning the fine art of eating peanuts at a roadhouse.

Tuesday:

This was the first picture I took all day.

This is the only other picture I took. TUESDAY WAS NOT GOOD.

Wednesday:

Obviously Wednesday was MUCH better.

I should stop calling her a weirdo, but not until she stops doing stuff like this.

C-bus. That's what the cool kids call Columbus. If there were any cool kids in Columbus.

Thursday:

The cousins LOVED the iPad, almost as much as they loved Little Evan.

Turkey shaped turkey and cheese ball is cheesy. Bahahaha I'm hilarious.

She wasn't as excited about the vintage dress as I was.

Friday:

Towing a plane with your car seems like a really, really stupid idea. Planes don't sit in traffic.

She's ashamed to be seen wearing the same jammies twice in one week.

Back to our regularly scheduled TV zoning out.

Saturday:

My GIANT HAUL from Joann's. Spent about $90, saved $112, and I won't need any craft supplies for months.

Went out to hunt and kill our own Christmas tree like good Americans.

Walked three houses down the street to watch the parade. One of the best parts of living in town.

Future eyelash model

Naked tree. Don't worry, it's fully dressed now.

Whew! That was exhausting. Tonight I am putting some of those craft supplies to use and finishing up my list of shopping to do tomorrow while E is still home to watch the kids. There will also be napping. I need to make up for some of that sleep I missed while Caroline was trying to kill me in Ohio. Or maybe I’ll get started on my Christmas baking. SO MUCH BAKING TO DO!

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!