Holden's First Birthday Party

Oh, man, yesterday wore me out. I woke early, fed the baby, and packed my family off to church. I stayed home for a decadent morning of (wait for it) housecleaning. Oh, yes. I know how to live it up.

We finally threw a 1st birthday party for wee Holden yesterday afternoon, and I panicked over the state of my house. Thankfully, Mom drove down from north Houston on Friday, and she joined me Sunday morning to finish the preparations. Together, we vacuumed and shampooed all the carpets, swept and mopped all the floors, scrubbed the bathroom, cleaned the kitchen (several times), washed walls, cleaned cobwebs from corners, dusted, and made the house magnificently presentable. We even Windexed the front hall mirror and the glass on the front door.

I made cream cake on Saturday: a two-layer, six-inch round cake for Holden, and a two-layer, 10-inch round cake for everyone else. I made the quick fudge buttercream icing featured a couple of years ago on Smitten Kitchen, and I was pretty impressed with my results!

The party was a great success; Holden's friends from Kindermusic, from our childbirth education class, and from my knitting group came out to celebrate with him. My friend Tabby led a Kindermusic class, and we sang songs, played with musical instruments, danced and tried to catch bubbles.

Of course, the best part of the afternoon saw Holden's introduction to sugary, chocolatey goodness. Daddy prepped the camera while I put the candle in the cake. And because pictures are worth a thousand words, I give you the photo story:

Happy birthday to you;

happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday,

dear Holden!

Happy birthday

OH SNAP!

Most satisfying 1st-cake experience, ever.

This is how we do it, yo.

Papaw, you want a kiss?

How we convinced him to keep that hat on for so long is beyond me. Actually, I think he was a little distracted by the MMMM CHOCOLATE CAKE.

Apparently, Holden does not like getting his hands dirty. Never mind that I dug chocolate boogars out of his nose 24 hours after the party; his hands were clean! Once he determined that face-planting in the cake would yield minimal chocolate ingestion, he employed Papaw's hands to get to the rest of that elusive delight.

We opened presents much later, after most of the guests had left. Holden usually found it hard to divert his attention from one gift (or its box) to rip the paper off another one. He received and has had a great time playing with a number of awesome gifts, but that will have to wait for another post; I have work to do!