Birthday girl

This was Dorothy Tallulah a year ago today

  

But on Saturday, she turned 1.  I can still barely believe it.

She opened a band in a box on her birthday morning, and the boys wasted no time helping her make music.

This picture is blurry because she was dancing and singing her face off.

Piano:  Also a huge hit with all

But especially the birthday girl

Her brothers were, of course, extremely attentive present openers.

It still cracks me up to see her tiny little self standing and walking around.

Ben was on spring break last week, and even though we worked on the party everyday, we were still running way, way behind on the morning of, when Dorothy (OF COURSE) did not go down for morning nap.  Things got stressful, and Ben had a full-on panic attack.  He gets panic attacks every couple of years-- in fact he was hospitalized with one on Harry's 4th birthday because he thought he was having a heart attack.  He freaked out and called his parents, his sister, and our college friends and CANCELED THE PARTY, claiming that he was sick with a stomach bug which is, of course, a sure fire way to make people not want to come to your house.  I made him drink some water (he panics when he gets dehydrated-- you should see him chugging water when I am in labor) and call everyone back. Because we worked hard on this party!  Our friends are awesome and know that we are bat shit crazy, so they said no problem, we're on our way.  Then my brother had a work drama and had to back out at the last minute, so our 21-person party was reduced to 14 guests.  WHICH?  MOAR CUPCAKES, I say.

My mom helped me use extra china to make little cake stands for our sweets table.  That's a tablecloth my grandma made when she was a kid!

Smash cake!  Organic!  Dyed with fruit (not the green-- that has a drop of food coloring in it-- leftover from the cookies I frosted)!  Had to scrape her name off and rewrite twice and it STILL looks like I let Harry do it-- no offense Harry

Ben made candy flowers and chocolate mustaches.

Here's the adorable china Jack and I picked out

Cute little table decorated with sweets

Dorothy slideshow on TV and clothespin ans string Dorothy banners hanging everywhere

This is my fave-- Instagram prints of all her monthly pictures (and one Polaroid from her b-day)

More Dorothy pics

So many cookies.

Anoth

While I made sure to get pictures of all the STUFF, I really sucked at taking pictures of others.  Luckily my dad took pictures of me and Dorothy on his iPad and shared his photostream

I love how terrible this picture is of both of us

I think we look alike here

I love he way she eats puffs

Cheese

Selfie

She was all about the puffs

Until she tried a cookie.

She loves her big brother

Lunch!

Sometimes people wonder how we deal with so many small kids, and we always joke that we let the third one go feral.  Except we're actually not joking.  Case in point: he went out to the deck where we were classily storing our classy beverages and helped himself to this.  THEN HE POURED IT IN A TEACUP.

More lunch!

Okay. seriously.  A thousand pictures of Dorothy eating her cake and throwing it on the floor.  At one point she laid her head on it and hugged it, but I did not get a picture of that:

Presents!  She loved the bags the best

Ben, with a cute cute dress from my aunt

Dorothy got a helmet, obvs.

Probably should have helped her, but instead I took a picture.

She likes this car, and she got another completely awesome outside car

And she LOVES cookies

After the party we went out for dinner with my parents, and OH MY GOD look how big my top knot is!  It's almost the size of my damn head.

Selfie

Cooper loves this car like no other.  He hasn't walked anywhere in days.