Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You.....

So, on July 28, 2006 Sophie turned one year old! I can't really believe it! In some ways this past year has flown, and in another way, it seems so long since we took the trip to Florida to get her and bring her home. One thing is for certain....in that first year (I can't speak yet for the years to follow) kids change CONSTANTLY! You just get used to them being able to roll over and they're up and crawling. You baby proof the floor area for the crawler, and they pull up and grab everything off of the tables. You think they'll get up 3 times during the night for the rest of your life and you'll be sleep deprived and half deranged forever, and then suddenly you have that night where you wake up, the sun is up, and they slept all night long! It's been a great year, the best of my life, and I love that little girl with a fierceness that seems overwhelming sometimes. She's taught me so much already....about the capacity I have to love, how to live in the moment, how to have a sense of humor about the oddest situations you find yourself in, how to use a "snot sucker", how to change a "poo explosion diaper", and how to take care of myself while being a 24/7 caretaker of another human being's life.

So, anyway, enough mushy stuff. Here are some pictures of Sophie's first birthday.

Opening birthday gifts. She got so many cool gifts! She's having a field day playing with them now!

Sophie in her tacky, designed to embarrass her when she's 15, "birthday princess" tiara. I couldn't resist. She hated it. It stayed on for about 30 seconds. Long enough to snap a couple pictures, though, and that's what matters!

Eating her first slice of birthday cake. She was much neater and daintier than I thought she would be with it. What a cutie. I think she liked it.

So I think she enjoyed her first birthday, although really she had no clue why she was getting so much attention and so many gifts. It meant a lot to me to celebrate having her in our lives. I think maybe that's what first birthdays are all about.