Our Angel's (working on it) Birthday

Here's the birthday girl happily eating Alina's Pringles (which she was kind enough to share) on the morning of her birthday. She'd politely stick her chubby, little hand inside ...


... and unpolitely pull out a stack of chips (such a little pig!):
Alina helping make the gelatin:

The party was great! Several friends came over, it didn't rain (it'd been raining the whole week), the food came out O.K., and Laura was happy and well behaved (progress, ha!).

It's hard to believe that she's already one! All of a sudden she's not our little baby anymore. It's like she knows that she's bigger now and she just changed.

She's super tuned in to everything that goes on around her, thinks she knows everything, tries to do everything and communicate even though she doesn't say absolutely anything yet (not even "mama" or "dada"!! ... so frustrating).

She's a nut and a rascal, the grumpiest baby around and yet she makes the funniest faces. I don't know what we did wrong! She does not resemble an angel at all (or anything close to one), but we're pretty sure she came from Heaven 'cause she brings just so much joy (and sleepless nights) to our lives, and, as Alina would say, "We couldn't live without her!".
So anyway, here are several thousand party pics.

Once most everything was ready:

Happy people (Marina, Gabriel, and Márcia):

A family shot before people start devouring the food:

And another one ...





She recently started walking a bit (finally!):

With grandma:

Three piggies munching away:

All the relatives present, hehe (Dad, Rafa, Marina, Ana, Mom):

Junk-food time!

Mom and Dinha:

"I'm a little monkey!"



Alina blowing out the candle for Laura:

You know how most babies will stick their hand[s] in the cake the second they're allowed to? Well, not Laura. True to her nature of being different, she went straight for the candle and was in the process of tasting, not even the part that was on the cake, but the wick (well, what was left of it)! Now how wicked is that?!?

So no, we don't have any of those cute 1st-birthday-photos of a cake-covered face, gooey hands and hair ... not to mention a smashed cake ... sigh.



She looooved the balloons:



Stretching out at the end of her busy day:

So as wise Shakespeare said, "all's well that ends well", and thus ended the first year of our monkey's life ... and what a wonderful year it was!

One thing I love about having children is that you see progress, growth, and change every day. One day you're holding a squishy, slimy thing, and the next you're holding (or no longer holding) a talking, walking, accident-waiting-to-happen! Quite exciting!