Lucy's first birthday

I know everyone says it, but I can't believe it's already been a year since the first moment we held our baby girl. She has come a long way from the immobile, passive infant that she once was. Now she's full of energy, laughter, and personality. So we decided to throw a big birthday party for her.

We had fun making high heel shoe cupcakes. It's probably the most creative cake decorating I've done.

I had a little help from little Aunt Isabel in decorating them.

We invited all our family members that live close by, which included David's dad's family, his mom and grandma, and Irene and her family.

For lunch we let everyone make their own pizza on English muffins. After that, it was time to sing to the birthday girl. We provided her with her own cupcake with an unlit candle on top. It was obvious we hadn't had a lot of birthday cakes in our family because not only did I not remember to buy candles (the one I had I borrowed from my in-laws) but I forgot to buy matches. The reason we didn't have cakes is because David doesn't really like eating them, and I can't just pig out on one by myself. Luckily, Lucy complied with our lack of preparation and even blew an imaginary flame at one point. After that, we let her have it, but it took her a while to dig in. One thing to know about Lucy is she is very observational. She thoroughly examines almost everything for a long time before she puts them in her mouth. This works in my favor most of the time, but this time she needed a little coaxing from me to get on with it. After the first taste, it was over.

All those who came brought some lovely gifts for Lucy. So far she has enjoyed every single one.

Including a couple of musical birthday cards.

Apart from Lucy's birthday, I think I'll give an update on our dog, Reba. The two commands that she has down almost perfectly are "sit" and "kennel." The ones she does pretty well are "down" (as in lay down), "wait," "ok" (her release word), "do your business" (go potty), and "come." David even taught her some fun ones like "shake" (handshake), "high five," and he's currently teaching her "roll over." The ones she understands but doesn't necessarily want to obey all the time are "off" (as in off furniture and people), "no biting" (which she has made a lot of progress on but still does out of her cattle dog instinct and sometimes to get attention), "no jumping" (one of her worst habits when people come over), "leave it" (which is one of her better ones but still has room for improvement), and "drop it." These are usually problematic when she has a lot of energy but nothing stimulating to do. Other than that, she can be a pretty obedient dog. One problem though is that even though she listens when we tell her to go outside, we have still not been able to keep her from going inside. Her accidents are farther apart but they still happen, which really tries our patience at times. But my biggest priority is making sure Reba understands how to behave around Lucy. She has been gentler with her, but we still watch them both very closely whenever they're around each other. As far as Lucy is concerned, she is highly entertained by Reba even when I think she should be scared of her, but she doesn't even react when Reba is licking the back of her head for several seconds.

She even plays with her by taking Reba's toy and running off with it so that the dog will come take it back from her. We are in fact trying to train them both how to behave around each other.

In conclusion, Lucy had a very good first birthday. Since that day, the only other event that has occurred is our second anniversary. Life is good.