Mango's First Birthday

I have been a blog slacker since Luke got home and my mom says to get off my butt.   She wants pictures of grandbabies!  So here are some pictures of her littlest grandbaby tuning the big 0-1! 


Mango was totally excited.  Okay, not really.  She just thought we were acting really weird, but at least she got to smash a cupcake.  We made her really frustrated about it though.  Luke had recently introduced her to Twizzlers, so she thought the candle looked pretty tasty.  But then we nabbed that away.  Then she saw this beautiful little butterfly that also looked delicious, but as soon as she got it up to her mouth, the cupcake got snatched away again.  So then, all that was left was this big blob.  She figured it out eventually though and spent the next few minutes enjoying the rare sweetness of frosting and cake.  Mmmm.  We knew she was done when she just stopped and started sucking her thumb.  It was cute.

We got her cleaned up and sat her next to her pile of gifts, but she was totally clueless about what to do with it.  First she tried to climb it, but couldn't quite get her leg up high enough and it wasn't very stable anyway.  So then she decided to just push it over and thought that was pretty great.  Then she tried climbing it again, and her foot pushed through the wrapping paper and she realized something was in there.  It was funny because she wouldn't rip the paper, she would just sit there trying to pull whatever was in there out.  Her first present was a little ride-on car with lots of buttons and noises.  And she thought it was awesome.  And she could care less about the rest of her presents.  We'd pull her away and give her another gift, but she'd toss it to the side and crawl back to the car.  So we finally hid the car, but she still wouldn't rip the paper and would keep trying to pull the toys unsuccessfully.  It was pretty silly.  But we did manage to get everything unwrapped with the help of some big sisters.  They had more fun with her new toys than she did, but once we gave her little car back, she was pretty happy.  

It was a fun party.  It was kind of funny because she was so confused by everything, but Strawberry and Apple had a blast.  I can't believe my baby is 1.  The funny thing is, it seemed like the past year just flew by and she grew so fast, but at the same time, the past 8 months dragged on soooo long while Luke was deployed.  So it was the shortest, longest year of my life.  Weird.  

She's still working her way up to walking and talking.  I like that she is taking her time though.  My other girls both started walking really early and so it didn't seem like they were babies quite as long.  Mango is still my little baby who wobbles and has to hold my fingers to walk around.  The youngest is supposed to stay a baby longer anyway, right?