Lilah's 1st Birthday Smash Cake

As you can tell I've been catching up on blogging the past few days. Here are some of the pictures from Lilah's smash cake on her real birthday Feb 26th! I didn't make a cute cake for it... just a simple chocolate cake with chocolate icing. She didn't do a lot of smiling... she was more interested in tasting it and playing with it before I took it away. You know what I mean? When you are letting them do something messy but they are acting like they are doing something they are not suppose to even though you are right there letting them hahhaha. Too cute!

Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter Eggs this weekend! It's a little bit early, but we wanted to do them with Auntie Abby and she's only here on the weekends and next weekend we're so busy with birthday parties and a wedding so we planned a head just a little bit and did them sooner rather than later. It's better this way because now Emmy will get to play and admire them for two weeks instead of just one!
Lilah sat in her high chair with us snacking on a crayon while she was coloring. I was afraid to even let her touch an egg since she's allergic to them in case one had a crack or if she were to smash one. When she's older and understands I don't think it'll be a problem and she'll be able to join in!!

When we were doing with the eggs and it was time to let them dry Emmy had a total meltdown. She was so sad and upset that our craft time had come to an end. I ended up getting her a handful of small smooth stones to dye in her cups. It actually stained them a bit...I was surprised. She gave up using her dipping tool and went in for them with her hand and by the end of it she had 100% blue avatar hands lol!! It's nearly all gone now from lots of hand washing and playing in the backyard.

That face cracks me up!!

Check out that frown! haha Emmy is serious about her art!

Pretty Painting!

They came out so pretty! I was worried that the eggs wouldn't go pretty colors since they are brown eggs but we got really pretty rich colors and this picture really doesn't do them justice on how pretty they really are! They also have glitter sparkles on them that doesn't really show up in the picture.

Singing with Abby

Here's some pictures from the other night when Emmy and Abby were singing songs. There's also some of Lilah being a dare devil and climbing from the couch onto the tv tray. She is so proud of herself when she does this!!

Play-Doh Fun

We had a fun play doh day with Auntie Abby! This is one of Emmy's passions .... PLAY DOH!! She's not picky... some homemade dough with a butter knife and she's happy as can be, but being a huge play doh fan myself we have all the cool toys! Here we are making ice cream and free hand art work. I have given Auntie Abby a mission for when she goes home to look far and wide for my old play doh molds for making babies. I'm pretty sure it'll be laying around somewhere upstairs at Grandpa Pete's house. Lets cross our fingers!!

Smile girls :)

Emmy checking out the play doh girl I made.

Lilah eating play doh.. yummmy!

Not too much Lilah and you'll be able to play with the big girl toys too!

The One Year Summary

WOW!! Can you believe you are a year old already!? You are still such a little baby in my eyes. You amaze me all the time with doing "big girl" things and I get so excited but then I realize that "duh!!! you're growing up"!! You love to help me when I'm picking things up or putting things away such as putting the blocks back into the tub or picking up the q-tips you love to dump out.

Your favorite foods include grapes, tomatoes, pasta, and avocados. You don't have any strong food dislikes and nothing comes to mind while I'm writing this. You are a very good eater and will usually eat whatever is put in front of you and will at least try everything. It makes me so proud that you love avocados (1. because the are so healthy and 2. because I've tried so hard to get your sister to eat them for YEARS now and she still hates them!) You are still a boobie baby and don't care about it too much during the day, but it's a must have at night. You sleep curled up to me at night and often I wake up to you helping yourself to a late night snack. As of right now I'm happy to feed you until 2 years of age or if you want to stop before then that's okay too. Daddy and I went away for a 3 day 2 night getaway to the Flinders Ranges and you really did a good job of excepting the bottle for your grandma Jan and Auntie Abby. When I got home on Sunday afternoon you were happy to be rocked and drink your own bottle. I thought that I might go ahead and ween you since you had already been through the hard part, but I was so sad. I was crying and a total mess. All I could think about was the last time I fed you and how I didn't know it was going to be THE LAST TIME. Obviously I wasn't ready and after 6 hours of you being a bottle baby I whipped out the boob at bedtime and you were very happy to except it. We spent all week long with you getting very upset early early morning because my supply had slowed down ALOT and the milk you were use to having was not there. Everything's back to normal now and we're a happy team.

You wake us up in the morning with kisses, and do whatever you can to crawl over me or your dad to get to your sister. You want her to wake up and play with you too! You can get really jealous of her and want to do what she's doing or have what she's having. You amazed me the other day by pushing the small child size chair over to the TV Stand and then you climbed up the chair, stood on it, and started playing with all the DVD's that are off limits. You totally can stand on your own but you choose to not do it and you will only walk when holding onto something like a walking toy or a doll stroller. When you are walking with these items you are very very fast. Any day I think you'll just stand up and go and that will be that!

You usually take 2 naps a day. If I'm lucky you'll take a big late morning to afternoon nap that can be anywhere from 30 min to 2 hrs. Then you'll take a cat nap around 5 pm, and then go to bed at 8:30 or 9. You start to get tired long before then, but it doesn't matter what I do.....you will NOT go to sleep.

The past few days you are teething your fourth top tooth and with the amount of crying, whinging and carrying on that you are doing I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't another tooth on the bottom coming up. It's hard for me to tell because I'm not to good at it. I think I can feel something coming up on the bottom, but only time will tell for sure. I load you up on pain killers and teething gel and sooth you the best I can with ice, frozen rags, or teething toys. None of these things seem to make much of a difference and you cry and cry and cry. I took you too the doctor today to make sure you didn't have any other signs of infection that I might have missed and to check your ears for inflammation, but you came back with a squeaky clean bill of health!

You know when your sisters shows come on and you'll start dancing to the opening songs or when Emmy is singing you dance along. Sometimes you get on the mic yourself and give it a good try. Lots of "nana's and dada's" is what you say into it.

Your List Of Words:

Mom: Mom
Dad: Dada
Nana (You'll say this and I'll give you a banana trying to make an association.... not sure yet if there is one! hahah)
I've heard you imitate lots of things like "I Love You: "Thank You" "Bye Bye" "Hello"

Your favorite toys are anything your sister is playing with. You really like your bath toys and will often fight over one particular shell shaped cup in the bath tub with your sister. You love to hug baby dolls or stuffed animals and totally love it when someone sits down to play with you.

You have NO interest in TV yet and I totally don't get that one. It makes teaching you sign language a bit difficult because I'm not as disciplined as I should be when it comes to signing to you on a regular basis!!

You are 72 cm and 9kg (both of these are guesses based off of your last measure and weigh) I will put in PROPER numbers hopefully this week when I take both you girls in for a check up with the nurse. You are such a tiny little thing when I look at you. You're not scroungy at all, just sweet and petite!

swimming / fun fun fun / party ending

We had so much fun this year and everything went as planned. We didn't get to play some of the games I had planned, but I don't think the kids missed them one bit. There was so much to do and the pinata, they really liked that, and then we did 100 water balloon fight that even all the adults got into too!!! Next year I think we'll have to have 200 water balloons.....it went much too fast! I felt so sad as people started leaving. I know it had been a long day, but I just didn't want it to end. I did my best to get around and talk with everyone, but I would have really enjoyed sitting down more and talking with everyone, aahhh but that is the curse of the host! haha I hope Auntie Sherry & Robin will except a big thank you from me with help in the kitchen and keeping things cleaned up as we went along! That's half the battle in throwing such a large party! Thanks ladies!!

Daddy all worn-out!! He crashed after this for a long 3 hour nap and left me with the mopping! I know I know....woman's work!

Here's a very tired Birthday girl drinking her milk before she goes to crash with her daddy for a nap!

Here's some of the kids swimming before the party ended!

Emmy and Lilah playing outside after the pinata broke. Emmy loves her bubbles!

Panda Pinata

It took my sister, Abby, and myself the better part of 5-6 weeks working on and off to complete this panda pinata!

Here he is!!! He's all finished and ready to be whacked!!

Emmy & Mommy gave it a good go!

Yay!! Right through the eye!!!


Mitchel delivered the opening blow! This is the most awesome picture ever!!! NOT one bit of photo editing has be done to it. Renee caught it at just the right moments!!!

I also need to thank Renee for taking my camera and walking around taking dozens and dozens of photographs for me!! I was so busy making sure everything stayed flowing that I had no time to take any myself and it was such a relief knowing that someone was taking great care with a very important part of the party for me!!!

Here's the kids picking up their candy and prizes!! The panda was filled with $40 of candy, small toys, and girlie accessories like rings and necklaces. (sorry boys!)

After the beating some of the big kids had fun with him too! lol
It's a great look for you Abby!!!

presents and birthday wishes

Here's our thank you that went out to everyone that came or bought/sent presents!!!

They sure made out good!! And there were tons more than in this picture.....gguuueezzsh!

Here's Emmy hiding under the table to sneak open a present early! hahahha! She didn't think that anyone could see her!!


Opening up TINKER BELL 2 Thank you Layla!!

I wonder what this one is??

This is what Lilah did the whole time.... hanging on to mommy while all this chaos was going on!! Of course Emmy didn't mind opening all of Lilah's gifts LOL!!

hanboks/ birthday candles/doljabi pick

Here's the girls all dressed up in their hanboks! It was so hot and we crammed this poor little things in the long hot dresses for the birthday cake and ceremony!

Happy Birthday Lilah!! Blow out the candle!

yayayyaya!!!!

Emmy! Here's your cake! You are two years old!!! She did blow out her own candles!!

Here we go!! Doljabi time!! Pick one item, Lilah!!!


She picked the maraca!!!!

We also did a raffle to see who could guess what item Lilah would pick and the from the jar of the chosen item we then drew a winner to win some homemade chocolate mint fudge, my mothers recipe!

Doljanchi is a traditional Korean celebration of a child's first birthday. The first birthday has special meaning in Korean culture, and some people believe that the first birthday is an opportunity to pray for blessings for the child's future. A doljanchi celebration includes feasting, gifts, and a special ceremony called doljabidoljabidoljabi.

Here's the raffle tickets I made.


Here's the voting glasses we made!

She picked the maraca!!!! This means her life path according to Korean tradition will have something to do with being a musician or being musical! I guess we'll have to start young exposing her to different instruments to see which one she'll choose to play. Secretly I'm hoping it'll be the guitar or piano, but I will always support her choices!!

Riley eating a panda pop! This makes all the hours of cake making worth it all!! Look at that little face. I was told that he ate every last bit of it too!!! This little guy has a BIG sweet tooth!!!!

Hanbok Girl Image was found doing a google search for "hanbok" and belongs to Littleseouls.com thank you for letting me use your copyrighted image!

Birthday Cake

Lilah hanging out while we were doing last minute party decorating.

Panda Pops (Cake Pops) Vanilla Cake & Vanilla Icing on a stick and dipped in White Chocolate and decorated with fondant. These things tasted SO GOOD!!

Cupcake Cones - Chocolate cake with Fluffy Almond Icing
I think these turned out so cute!

This was the official cake. I used the Bake'n Fill cake pan and used Chocolate cake with Dark Chocolate Butter Cream and decorated it with fondant.

I didn't get a good picture of the Gift Boxes or Lolly Boxes (that's what Kim calls them) haha They had a picture of the girls on one side and on the other side was a cartoon Korean Girl in a hanbok. They were filled with tons of candy, stickers, small toys, and asian jelly candies...they were in take out boxes to go with our Korean theme :)

Here's the girl's pretty cake & treat table.