Here's the link for the recipe. Beautiful right? In hindsight I wish I'd used this strawberry cake recipe. It's truly the best ever. But since I was attempting the roses, I figured I should stick with the given recipe. Anyway, I found a tutorial for making roses at "i am baker". (different cake, same concept). After all her talk about how easy it was, I figured I couldn't go wrong... Well clearly I am NOT baker. After almost an hour of fighting with my icing to come up with the beautiful roses as seen above, I decided it was not going to happen ESPECIALLY on the sides of the cake...Going with the classic theme- the pearls etc, I ditched the idea of roses all over the cake and went with a pearly decoration along with Anabelle's monogram.
Even though it's not exactly what I was going for, I still think it turned out pretty. I also made red velvet whoopy pies for the occasion and ended up making an extra large whoopy pie and icing it to use as Anabelle's smash cake. So the whoopy pies ended up looking more like something for an Alabama football game (roll tide!) but the smash cake was pretty cute...
Anabelle wasn't too sure what to think about everyone singing to her...
But she loved that birthday cake (and crashed just a few hours later from a sugar high...)
Of course, big sisters were the MOST excited about the birthday party- all they could talk about for weeks was Anabelle getting her own cake...
Just in the last week it seems, Anabelle's little personality has come out more and more. She is definitely NOT shy (though coy when she wants to be). On a recent international trip, on more the one occasion I looked up to see her flirting with people all around her- waving, grinning. She does not meet a stranger. And, I'm realizing that she is quite loud. Her chatter at full volume is pretty much non-stop and she's actually started forming quite a few words just in the past week- ma ma, da da, bye bye, thank you, milk (sounds like ma), uh oh, to name a few.
Oh, and lest I forget, "no no" with finger waving is also a favorite. We had a standoff the other day over Mia's dog food that ended with her swatting my hand and saying "no no" (after I swatted her hand) and me leaving the room laughing. Anabelle 1, Mommy 0....
Of course her favorite game is to throw something down and say, "uh oh" and then to say "thank you" when you hand it back.
And one of the most important things in Anabelle's life right now is lovey (the pink giraffe below- it's an old picture but lovey hasn't changed besides that she probably smells a lot worse from the constant slobber...). Lovey is around for every bedtime and is held so that Anabelle can rub the little giraffe head and occasionally stuff it into her mouth...
One of her sweetest new tricks is to say "Hiiiii!" with the cutest little southern drawl (no idea where she gets that...) . She'll crawl up to someone, stop at their feet, look up and say, "Hiiiiiii!". So sweet.
And she's definitely got the cell phone concept down. Every time one of our phones rings or makes the incoming text message sound she says, "ahh-ahh ahh-ahh" as loud as she can. I'm telling you, she's learned early that she's going to have to be loud to be heard in a house full of women!
Oh, and a first in our parenting journey- Miss Anabelle is a feather weight! We've never had a petite baby before! She got her one year shots yesterday and is 30 inches tall (80th percentile) and weighs 19.1 lbs (around 25th-30th percentile!) She really didn't have much of an appetite through the winter with all of her ear infections, and just had a stomach virus last week so I'm hoping she'll bulk up a little soon!
Her appetite has really improved a lot over the last few weeks. She wants to eat pretty much all table food but sweet little thing is still toothless so it's a little hard...
Big sisters definitely weren't feather weights at this age! Can you tell who's who?
Precious girl, you are adored. And I believe with all my heart that all children are a gift from God and each is a precious miracle in their own special way, but considering our journey that resulted in you, my "gracious beauty", I truly tear up at least once a day when I think about how God blessed us with you.
Psalm 119:73 says, "Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands."
We claim this verse for you as God gave us a special glimpse into the way His hands formed you, and maybe one day I'll muster up the emotional energy to share about that journey. As with all our sweet girls, we pray you will grow in understanding of your Creators commands and His love for you.
And for fun, here's just a few more of that precious cheesy grin...
(and my horrible grin in this picture- yikes!)
1 comment:
Happy Birthday Anabelle! Her cake looks great and the whoopie pies look amazing! Too funny about her finger wagging- I think I would laugh every time, resulting in very little correction, ha!
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