Cake Smash...or Sampling

This is the part you've been waiting to see, right?

Baby girl going crazy in a cake?

We'll get to that later, here's quick overview of the small family party we had.

Dad and Auntie Katie

Ammah, my mom, me and Tatum--four generations of baby girls.

We started opening presents but Miss Tate would open a book...and be totally absorbed. Goodbye world, I have a new book. Not that I have a problem with that...but we had a lot of presents to get through. Basically we shifted all her toys from baby stuff to toddler-age toys...and it took awhile! Luckily she'll be too little to remember how many presents she got at her first birthday and do any sort of comparison...

She learned how fun tissue paper could be...

And that Pops could juggle blocks...

That she'll really get to keep the drum and musical instruments that I've drug out of the closet during times of desperation to keep her occupied...

And that singing cards were sometimes more fun than presents.

But one of the best presents of all was a long cardboard box that she could "ride." She rides Roy, toys at Gymboree, and now there's this...does life get any better?

Oh yes. The cake.

We stripped her down for the smash, presented her with the cake, sang "Happy Birthday," and waited.

With a look of disgust she ever so delicately began moving small portions of the frosting into the cup holder on her tray.

So Nonnie started into the cake to show her how it's done...

She still wasn't interested, and being a smart girl who had to go potty she took her diaper off...

And proceeded to pee in her high chair.

With that out of the way, Grandma decided to try the cake with a spoon...

Oh, so THAT'S what you do!

Daddy tried to get her to dig in with both hands with minimal luck.

But she did start eating it. We kept waiting for her to do a faceplant or something...

She just continued with her dainty bites...

Gradually she got more excited about it...getting rid of the hat and using the frosting as mousse for her hair.

YAY for the big girl!

So while it wasn't quite the smash we expected, she did seem to enjoy herself, and thoroughly painted herself with the frosting and whatever pee was left on her legs...

And headed straight for a bath!

My original plan was to have her outdoors on the grass, but what with it being 111 degrees and all I thought I'd spare the family and have it inside.

Even though it was way past her bedtime at this point, how many first birthdays do you have? We let her stay up, turned on some music and watched her dance to the rhythm.

After she finally went down I snapped a few pics of the decorations. It was a "You are my sunshine" theme, with lots of yellow and orange strung about.

In fact, it feels so festive with everything bobbing in the fan breeze that all the lanterns and crepe paper are still up!

And there to the left of the TV are all the weekly photos side by side. It's really quite amazing to see how much she changed week to week, and to see her become not just a baby but a little girl.

It was a ton of fun, and I'm glad that we kept it small and just family. We took our time, enjoyed Tatum exploring so many new and fun things, and reminisced about one year ago when, after taking her precious time entering this world, she came and turned our lives upside down.