Josephine's First Birthday Bash!

Josephine's birthday party was Saturday at the Coffee Emporium downtown on Central Parkway. We had about 50 people come in & out and it was truly the perfect afternoon with friends and family! The day started with lots of preparation. We had everything ready. First, the perfect cupcakes - with a very special one just for Josie -

Next, Josie's "birthday book" for everyone to share a special memory or wish for Josie's future (PLEASE...if you are reading this & did not get to sign the book...if you are out of town or otherwise...please mail a note that we can glue into her birthday book - 18 E. 4th St. #501 Cincinnati, OH 45202. Thanks!)
Then, we made a bulletin board with one photo from each month of Josie's life (which I will get added as a slideshow to the blog soon) -
We had the perfect space with big balloons -

And lots of food -
But, we were only missing one little thing - JOSIE!!!

Poor little thing was late getting her nap & we didn't dare wake her up, so Louie actually stayed at home until she woke up and we began the party without her. When she showed up, she was ready to party! She even had a little party outfit. Check her out...After hanging out with all her friends and family and going on lots of wagon rides, pushing her alligators around the coffee house, and playing with her cousins (and perfect babysitters) from Kokomo (thanks for everything Kinley & Arielle)...

...it was time to sing "happy birthday" and have some cake! Here is Josie showing off her new trick that we practiced for the party. How old is Josie???

This stunt made everyone clap, so of course she clapped too!
Then came the candle -
She loved the candle -

And loved that a room full of people was singing to her -
Then it was time to dig in to the cake and to pose for more photos -
I wonder if Louie knows that we captured him sneaking a bite of Josie's cupcake?
Here's the family photo. Hey M&M - before you now it we'll have a picture just like this with "Baby A" in the middle! And while we're on the topic of "Baby A" - just look at that beautiful belly grow - Then it was time to open presents. And, I'm not kidding, it looked like Christmas morning. Josie really appreciated everyone's generosity and she loves her new toys, books, and clothes!!! She had lots of help opening gifts (thank goodness)!
Then a wagon ride for Louie courtesy of cousins Morgan & Katrina.
And then we got kicked out of the coffee house because we had gone 45 minutes over our time. (Oops.)

Maybe it was the sheer volume of sugar that we all consumed, but we were still ready to party once we got home & we had the awesome Melissa & Doug "Band in a Box" from Aunt and Uncle M&M so in the words of Maurice Sendak - "Let the wild rumpus start!"

After the jam session that any good Phish-head could appreciate, we started winding down and Josie spent some more quality time in the awesome P'Kolino chair from Grandma & Granddaddy. She made it to bed about 9pm and then totally crashed. What a day!!!
And, I'll leave you with this photo from Sunday morning - although it could easily be from any morning or afternoon this week because we simply cannot get her out of this chair. Here she is hanging out with her new friend Molli the Bunny. I can assure you there are many more chair photos to come because she is just too funny sitting in it. What a big girl!
For more photos from Josie's first birthday, visit Aunt Manda's Blog at http://www.threeaustins.blogspot.com/ ! I'll also let you all know when the full set is posted to her Shutterfly collection. :)

Our baby girl is ONE!

On Monday, Josephine celebrated her first birthday! And I took about 200 photos that day (no exaggeration). These are just a few of our favorites to share how we celebrated her big day. After a very crazy weekend in NYC, Monday was a bit hectic as well. Luckily Carissa was able to make it, although we won't have her for the next two weeks due to soccer training camps at Xavier. Josie's birthday excitement got started straight away, as she was opening gifts from Carissa by 9am. As expected, she had so much fun with the tissue paper that it was a lot of work to get her to the actual gifts, but that was part of the fun!

Here she is with her great new presents from Carissa - a very cool Melissa & Doug stacker and shape sorter and a new book called "Gossie" that is just too cute. THANKS CARISSA! (This picture also illustrates the teething crisis we are currently working through - note all of the drool on her clothes. She's also had a fever the past three days & has been generally quite miserable. Poor baby.)
And, here she is after Carissa put her in her pretty party dress, because life is too short to not hang out all day in your pretty party dress. And she absolutely loves her new book!So, after a fun day with Carissa that I spent getting everything unpacked and washed after the long weekend away, it was time to celebrate Josie's first birthday as a family.

At exactly 5:25 pm (the time she was born one year ago) - we lit her cupcake candle and sang "Happy Birthday" to our big baby girl. She was totally in awe of the candle!

After "blowing" out her first candle by going "Fuh, Fuh, Fuh" - we set her up with her very own cupcake. It took her awhile to dive in (we joked that she would've been happier with a huge pile of birthday peas) but once she did she was pretty happy -

Ahhh...refined sugar....
Now, this next one is an instant favorites. As many of you know, I'm big into routine/ritual/tradition/etc so this birthday has been SO stressful because we're trying to set some family traditions into motion that we want to continue over the years with all of our children. One of them is the Birthday Crown. I found one at Babies R Us (pictured next below) but that just didn't really do it for me, because I wanted something more special and unique that she could wear every birthday and have forever. Thank heavens for www.esty.com because they had several felt birthday crowns to choose from. When I found this one (complete with a big cupcake on front) I knew it was "the one." Well, lesson learned, Josie didn't like the crown nearly as much as I did but I think this photo is actually even better than one of her just smiling. Well, it really just speaks for itself -
On to presents from Mama & Daddy - no tissue paper in this one because we had other plans for the evening and knew it might be midnight before she got to the actual gift in this big bag if it was filled with paper -

And here she is with her first birthday present from us - her BlaBla monkey - Verdi.
It was love at first sight! (Here she is clapping YAY!)
And getting up close and personal with him - we've just learned "nose" so she was checking his out.
And now for her "perfect gift" that we got in NY - the one that we trekked all over the city to find - A music table! (And whew) - She loves it! Here are some scenes from her first concert & you can be assured that there will be a video coming soon!

After a wardrobe change into her "birthday girl" tshirt, it was time for her big birthday adventure...

We headed out to Fountain Square for a special surprise -

Little did we know that the Fountain would have a special surprise for us as well. Check out that awesome rainbow in the water!
After eating dinner on the Square, the plan was to take Josephine on her first horse-drawn carriage ride. She always points out the horses when we walk around the city and had the time of her life watching all of them in Central Park. So, we knew this would make for the perfect first birthday event. The only trouble was that there were no carriages in sight! We figured it was a bust since it was a Monday, but as we were walking home, I heard the telltale "clop clop" and there it was. YAY! Here we are waiting for the "Cloppy" -

And, try as we might to get a photo of Josie smiling at the camera in front of the horse, she was way more into Bob the Horse than she was posing.

Here we are passing the building where Louie works - And headed back down Fourth St in front of Lytle Park -
The perfect ride ended right in front of our condo where we asked the driver to drop us off (how's that for curbside service). We were actually pretty impressed with the ride. It really did offer a different perspective of the city, and Josie had a great time, too. Josephine's first birthday was an absolute success! We are really looking forward to Saturday's big party which I'm sure will yield a lot more pictures and a lot more memories!

Hello all - I promise to get the photos from Josephine's first birthday uploaded soon (so you all have time to enjoy them before the next round of photos that will inevitably arise from Saturday's party). In the meantime, all of the photos from our New York trip (lots more than we posted here) are available in her Shutterfly collection - www.josiemarie.shutterfly.com You'll notice that the collection has a new look courtesy of Shutterfly 2.0 - as always, enjoy! :)

Happy First Birthday Josephine!!!!