Allie’s second Thanksgiving was the day before her birthday this year. Knowing we would have a busy guest-filled weekend, we took Thanksgiving Thursday very, very easy. I’m grateful for that. Mr. W and I hung out at home with Allie, and had an early turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie lunch with the kid at Claim Jumper. I pulled off small pieces of the warm cottony sourdough bread for Allie, and she enjoyed that. She also had a few bites of plain mashed potato (altho I suspect it’s pretty butter-laden). She did not enjoy the pumpkie pie at all and made a face. She likes sweet fruit quite a bit, but does not seem to think much of dessert. I’m happy about that. She had a rare couple of days of frequent soft poopies last wek, which gave her a bad diaper rash complete with blisters, so we gave her stuff we used to avoid to solidify her poops a bit more. Banana, bread, applesauce. Her new favorite thing is now bananas. She loves it SO much that she immediately learned to say it, so that she could point and demand it. “BA-ya-ya! BA-ya!” she’d say every time she’s within sight of a banana, pointing.


Friday, Baby-Boo turned ONE! We entered her room in the morning and greeted her with the happy birthday song. She watched us politely, then pointed at the nursing recliner and said, “Mum mum mum.” (Food.)

Mr. W and I hit the grocery store for some last minute stuff and bought Allie her balloons. (“bbbloon, bbbbloon, bbbbloon!”)

While she napped, I made her personalized “smash cake” out of whole wheat flour, wheat germ, mashed ripe bananas, homemade applesauce, and soy milk. It’s oil-free, dairy-free, and healthy, which means it also ended up being more smash bread than smash cake. I also made her frosting the sugar-free way, by stirring pure apple juice concentrate into softened whipped cream cheese. That was her only dairy. I also dripped beet juice (Mr. W’s contribution, mashing a baked beet over wire mesh thingie and extracting the juice, which he had to do because I had a FIT that he dumped the beet juice I’d previously collected and had been saving for the frosting) into the frosting to give it a nice shade of pink, which I used to frost the mini bundt smash bread. Then I added more beet juice for a deeper pink in the remaining frosting to make accent frosting. Turns out frosting a cake with cream cheese is not easy! It did not spread very evenly. But heck, it was gonna get smashed, anyway. Nobody else has to eat it. It wasn’t until Mr. W shoved the giant candle on it that I realized I’d inadvertently matched the “theme colors” exactly.

In the late afternoon, Mr. W’s parents arrived from Vegas. They hadn’t seen her since we visited Vegas when she was about 8 months old, and all she was doing then was pulling up and cruising a few steps. Now she’s running…

…playing…

…”jumping” (really just squatting and then springing up to a stand very quickly), and new on her bday, she suddenly started walking a few steps backwards, laughing, and she’d turn in a circle looking down until she fell over dizzy, giggling. Grandma and grandpa enjoyed watching her dig around in her toy box, take out the toy she wants, run with it across the room and place it on the couch or the piano bench, and run back for another toy.

They also enjoyed watching her dance…

and make faces at them, such as the mock-upset expression when she runs into something or trips…

…basically being her usual clowny self.

Later, the stepdaughter and her boyfriend came over bringing a big Hello Kitty balloon and joined in the Allie fun.

Mr. W’s dad kept saying how amazing it is that she’s always happy, doesn’t fuss before or after her naps, and has high-energy and great focus during her awake times. He told me that he’s now a believer in my sleep-focused parenting style. Heh.