april 22, 2012. ONE YEAR OLD.

brennan.  there are only a few hours left of your first birthday and i am willing them to go as slowly as they possibly can.  i'm not sure i want this day to be over as that will mark the official end of your first year.  and this first year has just been entirely too precious and significant to let today simply speed by without my awareness.  so beginning yesterday afternoon as i would watch the clock, continuing through today (because that is how hard we had to work to get you to us) i was imagining what we were doing this time last year.  we were walking, we were lunging, we were pushing.  and the clock reads the same time of day, and the date on the calendar reads the same date except the year has been moved one forward.  and you are one years old, sitting with your toys right in front of me, laughing as you pat your drums.  what a fun year we have had with you!   

wow.  how very much we love you.  

my birthday girl.

we had a fun fun day with friends and family here to help celebrate.

here is our dessert table.  homemake cupcakes with homemade frosting-YUM.  

simple.  punch & water.  goldfish, pretzels, & animal crackers.  lots of puffs.  

chronicle of her first year.  

month by month pictures

memories and milestones in each month of brennan's sweet life

brennan's main goal in life is to tear up whatever paper she can find.  hope her pretty windows last

trying to walk

momma/daughter birthday pic

kisses!

 she LOVED her cake.  her first moments were little licks of the frosting, but then she eventually figured out that she could pick the whole piece up and take giant bites out of it.  

i love chocolate!

still eating during our photo op

this is the only family picture that we got all day right before brennan is about to enter a sugar-induced coma.  i forgot to snap one before the party when we were all cute, sheesh!  

putting b to bed tonight was sad.  she is a big girl now!  she was SO TIRED from her busy busy day that she was asleep within about 2 seconds of me rocking her but i just couldn't lay her down to bed.  i rocked her and rocked her trying to soak in the moment.  

before she actually fell asleep, i tried to sneak in a few pics of us snuggling.  my girl who is normally so distracted by the shiny camera could barely even lift her head off of my chest to look at it.  sweet, exhausted, snuggly one-year-old girl.  

momma!  i am tired!  rock me to sleep already!  

adventure at the children's museum

with lane being out of town, brennan and i were able to take our saturday and go down to denver to meet erin and the boys for some fun playtime at the denver children's museum. it is a GREAT place and even though b couldn't yet fully enjoy everything it had to offer like the older ones can, she still at least is at a good age where she could play and had such a fun time.

it was SO CUTE to watch her just PLAY. she would crawl away from me to explore, and then would crawl back to check in and get a little snuggle, then would giggle and crawl away again to explore and play.

checking out the kitchen set

helping cousin trevor take a nap

playing peek-a-boo

just LAUGHING at herself in the mirror

momma! mirrors are FUN!

then she decided to kiss that cute baby in the mirror

swimming in the pond with trevor and brett

eating the magnets on the alphabet board. they'll get sanitized ;) most things in her path needed to get sanitized.

this was a fun fun day. so glad we drove down!

lately

i know. i need to get better about blogging. she is just entirely too stinkin cute to wait too long in between posts. so until i get some of our easter pics up, this will have to carry you over.

brennan loves putting things (9 times out of 10, it's our remote) into one of our toy bins, then going on a search and rescue expedition to re-discover it. Or, the very smallest toy at the very bottom of her bin is what she must get out to play with

and 9 times out of 10, this is what happens to her:

she gets stuck! it's both heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time as her little body flails suspended in mid-air. in my defense, this is the only time i ever snapped a picture before rescuing her after repeated opportunities to do so. i had to capture it.

there were some beautiful afternoons this week, so we went outside for a little picnic and playtime. lane said it was a little ghetto to get a pretty picture of her on a camouflage blanket, but whatev. she's cute.

this one is better.

and this last one is just in honor of being done breastfeeding. a picture more for me to remember these moments than anything else, but this is how b nursed. from the time she could reach up and find my mouth until our very last session, whether we were in public or at home, her sweet little arm would flail until it found my mouth. why that was comforting to her, i will never know. but this is how we nursed: