Bellana's First Birthday

Oh man, keeping up with three kids is just exhausting!  Things that I used to spend so much time on (like making birthday cakes) just sort of fizzle sometimes.  So when it was suddenly time to celebrate Bellana's birthday I didn't have an amazing cake made.  Instead, I took her with me to Walmart and discovered that they sell individual cupcakes for $.88.  There were only two that weren't boy-themed, so I held up a vanilla cupcake with chocolate shavings and one with lots of very purple frosting.

She chose purple.

We sang to her and brought her the cupcake with one candle.  Her face lit up with joy as she saw the dancing flame of beauty we had brought for her to play with...then she got really confused when Mommy and Daddy blew it out before she could touch it!  But she forgot about that when we gave her the cupcake.  At first she touched it just a little, not sure about the weird feeling of the frosting.

Then she started to really get into eating it.  YUM!

The rest of us enjoyed the 4-pack of Kimberly cupcakes I'd bought.  I am not a big cupcake fan, but these are soooo good!  They are $4 for a 4-pack.

Before too long, Bellana discovered that the real purpose of frosting is to use it as paint.  She gave up on eating it.

About this time, I decided that she'd had enough fun and it was time to clean her up.  Nathan said, "Why did you get PURPLE?"  "Because she picked it, of course!"  He promptly offered to put the other kids to bed by himself if I would clean up Bellana.  I went to the sink for a rag and when I got back--

It was too late.

She had rubbed her eye and gotten it all over her face and hair.  (You can't see it in the back, but it's there too.)

The thing is, I had just discovered when I was rinsing the rag that the frosting stains skin!  So Bellana looked like a burn victim while she opened her presents and for church the next day.  It's funny how things change, the longer you're a mother.  When Annalee got a black eye right before her first birthday I was really bummed that she would have a shiner to spoil her adorable birthday pictures.

But when this happened, I just laughed and thought it was awesome and memorable.  I will always get a chuckle about the purple frosting!

She got money from grandparents and my aunt.  Bellana did a pretty good job unwrapping Aunt Sarah's gift herself, since she is never shy about ripping things.  It was a book about a chameleon that wants a color of its own. Bellana got a color of her own!