Scarlett's 1st Birthday Week

I remember when Birthdays were only celebrated once a year. One night, and that's all you get. More and more I hear stories of birthday weekends, birthday weeks (2 weekends plus the weekdays sandwiched between the two), and even birthday months. Is it a girl thing? I have a friend who would go out with a bunch of her girlfriends and each would take turns pretending it was her birthday (completely different story but its funny and extremely economical as it turns out...) Anyway, Scarlett's first birthday just happened to turn into one of these crazy weeks (or two weeks if you include opening a couple of presents early). Monday was her actual birthday, and we had a few friends and family come over to celebrate with Georgetown Cupcakes (yes we still eat them despite their horrible, scripted "reality" show). Dave, Jacy/Joel/Liam, and Tracy/Anna/Will/Alana/Stephen came by to watch Scarlett open presents and smear cupcake frosting all over her face. Too bad they didn't stay until after 11 when we finally got her to come down off of her sugar high and go to bed! They say 1 year olds have no clue what it means to have a birthday and although I mostly agree with that, she definitely knew that something was going on and that she was getting a lot of attention. Luckily, attention is about her favorite thing in the world. Everyone has been incredibly generous for Scarlett's birthday, which is wonderful in that she is definitely feeling the love (and the over-stimulation!) but my goodness... we are going to need to buy a guest house to hold all of her toys! And little miss ADD just goes from one to the next in rapid succession. Whew! It's tiring just watching her.

Shonna wrote the last few sentences, so I have the mention the end of the birthday night. I made the first attempt at putting her down. I thought I was successful, but apparently I needed a relief pitcher. Shonna went up and just about had her. She came downstairs, but Scarlett's fussing started up again. I went up, rocked her in the chair, and BAM! She exploded all over me, the floor, up her nose, in her hair... All I could do was yell HELP! I immediately turned on the shower, undressed her, put her in and washed the mac and cheese off of the both of us. Before I could blink, Scarlett reached into the drain, grabbed the clean, bare pasta and shoved it into her mouth. I wish I had it on camera. It would have been a hit on youtube.

Tuesday we went swimming. To stay with the theme, we did have a #2 scare in the pool. The instructor thought she stepped on something. We all ran out of the pool, and we were mad. Why does this keep happening (3rd time) when the rules specifically state "wear swimming diaper and/or rubber bottom bathing suit"? I looked at some of the non-class kids and they were wearing normal bathing suits without any lining or special diaper. How are they allowed in the pool? Are we so afraid to call someone out these days? "Sorry sir/ma'am, you're baby isn't wearing the right attire and something might leak out." Instead its "I can't say anything to embarrass them. It might hurt their feelings even though they might cause an entire pool to be shut down because of a floater." Well, that was probably accurate the first two times. This time our instructor thought she noticed a turd, but it was actually a light tan hair clip. Um. I'm sorry but do those two things look similar, even in 4 feet of water? "Better to be safe than sorry" is what we all told her. She apologized 3 or 4 times, so I have a feeling she felt embarrassed for making us get out of the baby pool and into the adult pool (and risk shutting down both pools).
Besides that issue, Scarlett and I had a great pool day. I can now dunk her without worry, but I also have to be strategic when doing so. For some reason, she likes drinking pool water, so most of the time when I try to bob her into the water, she opens her mouth and tries to take a swig. I have to catch her off guard, and when I do, she actually holds her breath. She is only in the water for a split second however. Don't worry about her well being!

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful leading up to the party, although she did have her 1yr checkup on Friday. She passed with flying colors minus the slight anemia. Apparently she is doing things an 18 month old does. Physically, she has been throwing objects overhand for a few weeks now. When the Dr. asked if she was throwing things by what essentially amounts to a chest pass, I said that she actually throws overhand. The Dr looked at me in disbelief, but as Shonna and I have witnessed, she routinely throws her toys overhand. Its not always pretty, and some spike right into the ground (we will work on her release point), but sure enough she throws overhand. She is advanced in many other categories, but the throwing seemed to be the focus of this apt. Time to hit CVS or some Fer-in-sol to boost her iron count...

Scarlett's Nana (grandmother) and GiGi (great-grandmother) stayed with us from Saturday Nov 13th to Tuesday Nov 16th. Nana documented their stay in a separate blog. It was great having 4 generations under one roof. Our family record is 5 generations (my nephew with my late great-grandmother Nana Fay, his great-great). I have a feeling GiGi (better known as Flossy) will live long enough to see a great-great herself. She is 92 and still plays golf. If she lives to be as old Nana Fay (107.5), Scarlett will only be turning 17 (and it better not come into play!), but my nephew Roland will be 26 or 27 so it is a possibility.

Scarlett's official birthday party was on Saturday (Nov. 13th) at J.W. Tumbles. It's a kid's gym about a mile from our house. We reasoned that there was no way we were going to fit people in our little (ill-designed) house (Monday was REALLY crowded), so we rented it for a birthday part,y figuring that we would spend about the same amount to have it at home. We weren't impressed by them before the party -- they wouldn't return our phone calls and were never there. But on the day of, they really pulled it together! Scarlett had about 14 kids there and maybe 25 adults. The place did a great job of keeping the kids entertained. They had a new activity every 10 minutes or so, including a bubble "machine" (a big fan with a teenager manning the bubbles), a zip line with a swing, a "tight rope", trampolines, some circle time, and then all of the normal stuff like slides, a rock climbing wall, tunnels, etc. It looked like a lot of fun! Scarlett was running around like crazy in the beginning but about 1/2 way through, she would get tired and just collapse for a minute on the mats until she was ready to go again. It was pretty funny. She spent a lot of time on the trampolines and throwing a ball with her friend from daycare, Claire.

After the official party, we had some cake and went upstairs to Pietanza for pizza. Scarlett downed way too much macaroni and cheese, as we learned at about 1130 that night when she threw it up all over Paul. :) Turns out she burned a lot of calories that she thought required immediate replenishing! I couldn't believe how much stuff she got! It would be a very long list if I tried to document everything here, but among her favorites were her trampoline and talking pot (from Nonni), her talking tea set, puzzles, toy kitchen, pillow pal, and, of course, the balloons. My two favorite things were a picture frame from Jacy that had a close up of her from each month of her life (gorgeous and definitely facilitates my obsession with her!) and a drawing that Pennie did of her. It is a drawing of one of the pictures from her 10 month photo shoot and is just amazing. I am seriously lucky to have such thoughtful and talented/creative friends! Finally, she got some savings bonds, which I am sure will come in handy in helping us pay for college since I hear it will be about 300k by the time she goes!

On Sunday, we finally got to take Flossy to her much belated birthday (April) outing, high tea at the Ritz Carlton in Tyson's Corner. It was also Scarlett's first tea experience, so it was a big occasion all around! We each ordered the royal tea, complete with champagne and strawberries with whipped cream and they even brought out an extra set of sandwiches and treats for Scarlett, including a sugar cookie man. She did pretty well considering it was such a low key event and did a lot of eating. The biggest problem was that she kept inviting herself to join our neighbor's tea party. Our little social butterfly... Who wouldn't want to have tea with Scarlett? The folks at the Ritz were kind enough to give Scarlett a Ritz Carlton rubber ducky. Two of the actually (one from the guy at the front desk, which is even wearing scuba gear). She is one fancy girl.

After tea, Flossy wanted to go to the mall to do our annual Christmas/Paul's birthday shopping trip. Her rule is that you don't get a present if you don't go shopping with her and pick it out. So Paul picked out a new winter coat. I tired to get a coat too, but as usual, my monkey arms meant that I had to order one online to be able to find one with sleeves long enough. She kindly still got me the coat even though I didn't get it while I was with her!