Happy First Birthday Gracie!

This Tuesday, January 10th, we celebrated Gracie's first birthday. In some ways, this year has absolutely flown by. But in other ways, Boyce and I can't remember what it was like not to have our Gracie. She is a tremendous blessing to us and teaching us so much. She now stands up without depending on anything for support, and takes a precarious step or two before deciding crawling is easier. She now has 7 teeth with two molars coming in (poor thing). She babbles incessantly and has three definitive words, "Mama," "Dad-dah," and "Hi."

She'll give kisses if and when she's in the mood and will wave goodbye and "Buh" means "Bye." She knows how to make herself go limp when we pick her up to try to take her away from something she wanted and is all about testing Mommy and Daddy to see if they really mean "no" (such as, "Do they really mean no when I touch the fireplace, the stereo, the outlets, the candles...etc.?"). She has mastered self-soothing during naptime, much to relief of Mommy especially.

Back to the birthday though. We had so much fun celebrating for her birthday! Boyce graciously hung the decorations, I attempted to make a pink ruffle cake (which actually turned out!), and we invited some friends over to celebrate with us by having pizza and cake. Gracie LOVED eating her cake. Once she finished off the piece of cake, she moved on to licking her fingers for any leftover frosting.

The Baileys' and Maughans' children are both Gracie's age, and the three of them had a lot of fun opening the gifts together. :) All in all, it was a wonderful first birthday. Happy birthday Gracie Lou Lou!