MoreThanWeExpected.com

It seemed like a wedding; a giant whirlwind with only the pictures left to piece together the stuff we had already forgotten.  Tony and I invited 50 or so people over for a low-key BBQ to help us celebrate Gwen's big day.  We had lots of yummy food to share with lots of great friends and family who gathered in our back yard for the celebration, sand box unveiling, present opening, and the coolest cake I have ever seen (thank you, Jacques)!

Thank goodness we had some of our very good friends, Keath & Ceridwen, come over early as they proved to be a tremendous help in properly setting up tents, filling three dozen balloons with helium, and aesthetically placing the remaining assorted decorations.  Because of their rigorous travel schedule we were happy to put them up for the night, getting to enjoy some grown-up quality time drinking and being rowdy once Gwen had gone to bed.

Gwen, who woke up from her nap just past noon to Mommy shoving a bottle at her and dressing her as quickly as possible (almost simultaneously), was understandably a tad cranky as the festivities started, but quickly settled into her role as "center-of-attention-birthday-girl" and was in an excellent mood the rest of the day.  She was such a good girl and was in perfect form for all her pictures.

Here's a giant pictorial extrodanaire, in case you missed the party, or forgot about it already, too.   :-)

Gwen in her new sandbox, a special "Yea!  You survived your first year in our care so we must be doing a decent job so now eat some dirt" first birthday present from Mommy & Daddy.

Opening presents!!!

She had her cake, and ate it too!  And boy did she love it, even though it was a smaller, less expensive version than the real show-stopper...

A couple of close-ups of the amazing, buttercream frosting laden, Cupcake-Cake provided by Jacques Pastries, conveniently located right up the road...,

And, as a special parting gift, the cutest pictures that needed to be seen but didn't fit into the "party story line":

Our first family vacation, a trip to my family’s summer home in Greenport, NY (specifically on the North Fork of Long Island) that we've always referred to as The Bungalow.  We used to spend a good portion of our summer vacations in Greenport visiting family as we lived in NH and pretty much the rest of my family still lived on Long Island.  It was always fun and Tony and I decided to expose Gwen to the long, muggy days spent out by the bay sea-shell hunting early.  A great time was had by all.  Here are some maps:

Now that you have an inkling as to where we are, here are some pictures (unfortunately we didn't take many still photos and only took a couple videos so there isn't much to share):

7/9 - Gwen ate her first real peach ("real" meaning non-pureed) and loved it!  There are more pictures in the "YUM! ~ First Foods" section

7/10 - We went down to the village to do some shopping and wanted to take Gwen for a spin on the carousel, which she instantly hated.  As soon as I attempted to sit her on a horse she started crying and then the not-so-nice woman running the show started yelling at me, "Hurry up and sit down, Mom.  We're waiting on you!"  So I paid my $2 to sit in the sleigh; nice and boring and safe.  When the ride was over we opted to give Gwen a second opportunity to sit on the pretty horsie (we needed the photo op after all!).  And what a photo op it was...

7/13 - Just hanging out on the porch, and she was in rare form.  I couldn't help but post a dozen pictures; she's just too damn cute.

Mommy and Gwen had the afternoon to ourselves so we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went outside to play in the sandbox, which we had only used once since her birthday.  Not only have we been too busy to squeeze in some quality play time, not to mention that she hates the feeling of both grass and sand, it's only been three weeks since her birthday, after all...

And as we can see, not only is she learning to enjoy playing in the sand, she's learning to enjoy eating the sand!

We had given Gwen the opportunity to play with a spoon and bowl with a little food in it only a couple of times before.  She didn't have very good control and really wasn't interested in doing much more than chewing on the spoon and finger-painting with whatever made it onto her highchair tray.  At the time she clearly wasn't ready, so we put the idea on the back shelf for a while.

A few weeks ago Gwen stopped eating any kind of food for us (besides a bottle).  No matter what I tried she wouldn't take food off a spoon, complete with flailing arms, tight lips, and violent shaking head protests.  She generally goes through an "I'm not going to eat" phase when she's cutting a tooth but this was going on for a few weeks and I just couldn't figure it out.  So I thought we'd give the "self-feeding" thing another go, immediately followed by a bath.  Here are the highlights:

Act I

Act II - Clearly a much messier experience

The sweet potato aftermath:

Awesome!

By the way - It turns out Gwen wasn't getting just one tooth, but more like seven; about a week ago she was in to the doctor for a virus and he informed me that she had her next two top incisors, as well as two or three molars, and her canines, all coming down at once.  No wonder she wouldn't eat.  We're still letting her toy around with feeding herself, but only on bath night!   :-) 

Gwen had a little trouble getting used to the idea of swimming but settled in once Mommy started blowing bubbles in the water, making the obligatory motor-boat noises.  She didn't so much enjoy floating as much as clinging tightly to Mommy's neck, whining any time we tried to switch hips.  She had more fun being a cling-on than floating but quickly became bored and whiny, making her first trip into the water short-lived.