Happy Birthday Charlotte!

It was a festival of toddlers and the soon-to-be-minted toddlers yesterday at our home for the celebration of Charlotte's first birthday. We bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced and squealed and bounced some more. We gorged on a precious cake courtesy the Hollin Hall Pastry shop (while I did not wield the pastry bag, I will take credit for the design) and we enjoyed gorgeous weather and good friends, both big and small, to mark our daughter's first year of life.

The toddlers (all 18 of them...yes...18 toddlers in our tiny back yard) monopolized the moonbounce, but I have assured Charlotte that she will soon be having her own playdates to do as Disney's famed Tigger and bounce bounce bounce. She and Harry did get to enjoy the bounce house before we were mobbed with friends and I think she will be an addict like her big brother, sliding face-first down the inflated ramp and landing with a satisfied thud. It was positively a cavalcade of toddler mania. (video of said madness courtesy our friend Missy, see below.)


Charlotte received some lovely gifts that her brother already assumes are his, including the hands-down-favorite -- a musical teapot with faux plastic petit fours courtesy our pals Lucy and Hannah. When you pour the pot you hear gurgling water, which is Harry's cue to put spout to mouth and wait.

A very big thank you to all of our friends who helped us make it a special afternoon by just being
there, and those who helped by helping (my godmother Cynthia always comes in in the clutch and our bestest moonbounce monitor, Auntie Cathy).

Charlotte and Harry will never know their Grandma Maria, who passed many years before they were born. But she was the finest party giver I've ever known-- truly Martha before Martha was Martha (her only transgression was serving a gourmet, homemade rum cake at my 4th birthday party. While I cried, I recall all the other kids loved it). I know she was there too yesterday helping us fluff up the crape paper and making sure the lollipops and pinwheels, favors for the kids, were just so. It would have been swell had she reminded me from the great beyond to buy plastic cups but I'm going to take the fall for that one. You're off the hook mom.

So, it's on to year two. Thank you sweetpea for being such a wonderful little girl. I don't want you to grow up too fast, but I'd be lying If I said I wasn't excited about braiding your hair and taking you shopping for your first pair of maryjanes. We love you!