Saturday, February 20, 2010

First birthday eve



Tomorrow, our daughter turns one. The reality of this has slowly become apparent as we've prepared for her birthday party, but I'm not sure when it's really going to sink in. Honestly, we're still getting over the fact that we got our Hayley at all. So it is with heavy emotion that I write this post (and tomorrow's, which will include a very special video).

It's hard to imagine a time without Hayley, yet I can remember her birth like it was yesterday. This past year has been the most amazing, scary, fulfilling, tiring, joyous year of our lives. So much happened but it's gone by so much faster than we were expecting. We watched our beautiful baby progress from little more than a tube into a (dare I say) toddler! We experienced all of those big and small moments as new parents that you hear about, and now we have the wonderful little family we always wanted.

One of the things we keep in mind as we develop our family is the idea of tradition. This not only means maintaining the most important traditions that each of us grew up with; we also want to start new ones for our new family. For Hayley's birthday weekend we started two new traditions.

You may recall that Miranda and I ate at the Cheesecake Factory (one of our favorite restaurants) for our final meal before heading to the hospital to induce labor. If not, feel free to refresh your memory here. That was two days before Hayley was born, so we thought it would be fun to have a meal there exactly a year later:


Sorry for the background noise, the place was packed as usual.

Today, we started something that we hope to continue throughout the years for each of Hayley's birthdays. This is probably a tradition you've heard of; you might even have done this yourself as a kid. We took Hayley to Toys"R"Us so she could pick out a toy for herself. These days, when you bring your kid to Toys"R"Us on their birthday, they get a balloon and a crown; one of the employees also announces over the store intercom that it's their birthday.



Since Hayley is still a little too young to really get what was going on, we picked out some toys for her, then let her decide among them. Of course, with this being her first birthday and her being the cutest child ever, Hayley got to take home two toys:




Not surprisingly, she liked the toy cellphone and the toy laptop more than anything. Someday, she'll graduate to the real versions of those things, but for now I'm glad she plays with baby toys. I'm not ready for my girl to grow up.

2 comments:

mrs.notouching said...

Awww... cute as a button and I cannot wait to see the cupcake birthday pictures!
P.S. we are definitely not coming - Leila has been sick since Thursday afternoon and just went to bed with 102 fever...oye

Geoff said...

Sorry to hear that Daiva. Hope Leila feels better soon!

There will be many, many birthday pics...