Happy birthday Poppy!!

May 25, 2009

Happy birthday Poppy!!

Today Poppy is 1 year old! It's hard to believe that her first year has gone by so quickly, i can still remember that very first moment of holding her, or of bringing her home from the hospital, and the first special days of having her at home with all the night feedings and endless changing of nappies. But in another way it's hard to remember what it was like when it was just me and Sir before we had Poppy and i can never ever imagine not having her in our lives now, so i guess in some ways it feels like she has been with us for always. Yesterday i spent some time looking back through the photo albums i made of her first few months, and i've sorted out all the photos i want to add to those but haven't got round to doing so yet. i'm going to make some time this week to get that done, so then we'll have albums for the whole of Poppy's first year of life. It's amazing to see how much she's grown in that short space of time, and how far she's developed already. She has so many skills and she learns new ones everyday, babies really are little miracles!

Yesterday we had Poppy's birthday party, and it was a great success. The weather was really kind to us, infact it was hotter than we'd expected and we ended up having to fill up Poppy's new paddling pool and whizz down to the shops for icecreams for everyone. But it was lovely to spend time in the garden with our friends and family, and watch Poppy playing with her baby friends and her 2 cousins, so happy and contented in the sunshine. We hired a ball pool and a bouncy castle for the kids, and those combined with Poppy's paddling pool and sandpit, which were her presents from us, kept the kids entertained for hours. Sir did a BBQ for the adults and i put out lots of little party snacks for the kids so they could eat on and off throughout the afternoon. Then we brought out the birthday cake, which was in the shape of a caterpillar, covered in chocolate and sweeties and veryyyyyyy popular with the children and the adults (though we did also have a grown-up dessert of sponge, meringue, cream, berries and sauce, laced with licquer!). The babies all took a nap in the afternoon, which gave us adults time to chat and catch up, and then it was back to more fun and games before everyone went home and we took a very tired but happy little girl inside to get settled down for the evening.

Poppy got some great presents too - a bubble machine which is great because she absolutely loves bubbles but wants them blown continuously which is tiring after a while, an easel and painting set, a 'tickle me Elmo' which makes her giggle whenever it's switched on, a 'baby laptop' (!) which we haven't tried out yet, quite a few cute clothes for the summer, finger paints (i can see that getting messy), and lots of musical and activity toys. She was very very lucky with her presents, good job she's too little to really be spoiled yet. And of course she loved the wrapping paper and the boxes just as much as the contents!

Today we're going to the airshow at the seaside, planning on checking out all the sideshows and entertainment, as well as watching the flying displays (the red arrows are meant to be performing which i'm looking forward to), having fish and chips and an icecream on the beach and trying out our new sand toys which we got for the sandpit but should work just as well at the seaside! Also we want to take Poppy in the sea properly for the first time because we didn't take her swimming costume with us last time, but it might be a bit cold for her so we'll see what the weather is like.

Happy birthday Poppy, and here's looking forward to another great year :)