è stata una buona annata

"It's been a good year."

In our lives, that's been due to little Josephine Annata. She hit the one year mark on April 2nd, and we celebrated by having our families down for a birthday meal. They, in return, showered her with gifts and attention. She LOVED it, and we all enjoyed seeing everyone. Thanks, y'all, for making the trip!

Of course, it's astounding to realize that she has gone from this (you can see more here):

to this, in such a short time:

And now our lives are really flashing before our eyes. By the end of her party she had begun driving her own Mini, playing the piano, and grocery shopping!

mid-wave

She does more clapping for her masterpieces than actually playing them.

That is her "hard work" face-- she scrunches her nose and huffs.

Newfound abilities aside, once every last scrap of wrapping paper had been shredded,
and every morsel of sugar polished off her sticky little hands

the best part of the day was, undoubtedly, family...

my child the stickivore

scrumptious!

coping with the crushing

I'm not the one responsible for drawing attention to this occurrence... (thank you mothers of teenagers)... I certainly don't do it (ahem, wolf spiders! bank voles! own up!)... but this evening the above-linked topic surfaced in my mind immediately following a demonstration of subconscious revenge while I [lovingly] filmed my child.

I turned off the camera, realized what just happened, and said to myself, "Yep. Yep, I believe I'm officially one of those parents who would like to cannibalize their offspring. I think we all need to go to bed a little earlier tonight; I can finish the Georgia taxes tomorrow."

Side note: Part of me is embarrassed, but I won't deny it... I did feel significantly better afterwards.

The Crushing of Courage, Confidence, and Character

...by one small, small child.

This pretty well portrays what happens to a low-carb diet when you ask me to enter single-parenthood for several days while Sean's out of town.
Maybe somebody* is not such a good Girl Scout, after all.
*and by "somebody" I mean Josephine, not me. What kind of scout would drive their dear mother to these measures??

"Here, Mom. Here's that EMPTY box of so-called scout confidence. Funny how I destroyed that in just a few days, huh??? Hope you took comfort in those dozens and dozens and hundreds of carbs!! [insert evil guffaw]"

P.S. To my waiting relatives: I can't blame taxes any longer, as they are coming along fine as of late yesterday evening. At this point I'm postponing heartfelt posts about her birthday and Easter until I feel a little more genuine endearment towards Child-Who-Turns-Insane-When-Daddy-Travels. Not to mention that I've been a bit busy taking her outside and on every errand possible to keep her distracted. My apologies-- I appreciate your patience.

belated bunny wishes

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

With Josephine turning ONE on Friday, our weekend was enjoyably full. I will upload more details and photos after I make some headway on our tax returns...