Dagny turned one year old a whole month ago and I've yet to tell you about the extent to which we celebrated.
That's because a lot has happened in our fair state since then.
But now that Dagny is thirteen months old, I thought it high time to make amends.
Before reading further, you should know that we don't do over-the-top Pinterest-inspired birthday parties in our family. The most likely reason is that we're too lazy.
Even so, we weren't without a theme.
For her baby's party, Audrey wanted vibrant colors, flowers and butterflies. Happy things.
We found everything we needed -- except the cake, and Dagny's actual presents -- at the dollar store.
Audrey stylishly and cleverly mixed stripes with petals and polka-dots. The effect was innocent but bursting with life, just like Dagny.
She found bright flower cutouts strung on invisible line that we hung from the ceiling behind where the birthday girl would sit, to form a backdrop.
There were mylar balloons. A little kid cannot have a birthday party without mylar balloons.
Audrey skewered marshmallows onto bright-pink straws and dredged them through chocolate, then sprinkles.
I made pulled-pork barbecue and we had the usual sides.
Aunt Stephanie and the cousins came from North Carolina. My parents came from Greenville. Uncle Andrew, having deployed to Qatar a week earlier, texted his greetings.
It was hot. Mucho caliente.
Did I mention it was hot? All emotional events are made worse by ambient heat. Remember that.
The party got underway at around two in the afternoon with our meal, followed by presents, then cake and coffee.
Dagny received books and toys and beautiful outfits, accompanied by cards both homemade and store-bought.
Aunt "Fashionista" Erica gave her a pink hat, a sartorial expression of which Dagny appeared both duly enamored and faintly wary.
The ooohs and aaaahhhs went on for what seemed like hours. I was so hot.
Dagny truly didn't know what to make of all the fuss, although she seemed early on to have made peace with the attention she was getting.
Audrey had bought the baby an elaborate cupcake but Dag was clueless about that too. I guess she's never heard of a smash cake.
Allissa and Audrey, one on each side, took turns feeding fingerfuls of eye-wateringly sweet frosting to the Birthday Small-Fry until she was in a quasi-stupor.
As it should be.
Before all the celebrating got genuinely underway, I took some shots of Audrey and Dagny together. I call it pirate posterity.
The next day -- June fourteenth, Daggy's actual first birthday -- she wore her Birthday Girl badge to church.
That afternoon -- it remained awfully hot out, I am just saying -- Audrey and I managed a mini-shoot with the still-buoyant balloons and Dagny decked out in a pale-pink ballerina-decorated dress, a gift from me and TG.
The baby hammed it up with her balloons. She's always been a good sport when it comes to posing to have her picture made. Here's hoping that trend continues.
All events taken together were a curious mix of joyous and exhausting. When it was over, poor tender-hearted Audrey practically had to take to her bed. The emotional expenditure was nearly too much.
Ah, babies. To quote Melanie Wilkes: The happiest days are when babies come.
The second-happiest days have to be when we give our hearts, minds, and energies to marking -- with food, fun, and flourishes, with gifts and with our time -- another whole year in which we've had those babies to love.
In eleven months we'll do it all again. Until then, Happy Every Day to you, precious baby Dagny.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Monday ~ Happy Week