Opal's First Birthday!

Opal may have been due on Luke's planned birthday (he had a scheduled c-section because of his birth defects), but she came on her own terms.  Here we are a year later, and I'm so glad that her birthday is so close to her brother's in heaven.  Each of my girls have been the rainbow after the storm, and Opal is no exception!  Will is still her favorite person...

 ...and she continues to love me when it's time to eat.

 

When Will's at work, she does allow some snuggles from me too.  Laid back would not be in the top 100 words I would use to describe her, and she is quite vocal when her sisters are keeping her from living her best life.  I am nicely and constructively implying that she screams like a banshee or a teradactyl and causes so much tension in my neck each time she yelps.  She's lucky she's cute.

Opal loves books, and says "Ba" when she wants to read a book.  In the top, left-hand picture below, we turned to the page pictured, and Opal immediately sneezed!  My girl's a reader!

Opal still loves making us laugh with peek-a-boo, and unless she likes the menu, she prefers to be silly rather than eat something she doesn't like.  Her list of preferred foods is growing, fortunately, and right now includes in priority order: graham crackers, pretzels, taco meat, sloppy Joe meat, waffles, crackers, blueberries, mango, cucumber, pear, apple, steamed carrots, green beans and peas, veggie or chicken soup, and plain pasta.  Sometimes she will eat oatmeal if it is congealed and she can feed it to herself.

Opal now says "Bye" whenever she sees us go out the door, even if it is just to take the trash out.  She says "Hot" when she sees steam coming off of stuff cooking in the kitchen or off the food on the table.  She says "Ssssss" when she's yanking off her socks and then trying to put them back on by herself, and also "Sssss" when she wants to go on her swing outside.  To me, the funniest thing she says is "Hi?" when she is about to do something that she believes is either not allowed, or dangerous. It's like she is saying, "Hello, is anyone watching me?  Please stop me as I can't control my impulses!"

Opal doesn't sleep very well, and because we've had three other children who have worn us down and frankly, broken our will to find a sleep solution, we get her to sleep in any way we can, while ignoring any bad habits it may be forming.  Fortunately we now know that she will outgrow it, just like her sisters did.  Sadly, this probably won't be until age 3 at least.  Until then, it is survival!

The day before Opal's first birthday we celebrated with both sets of Grandparents, and an aunt and an uncle who live close by.  We had a busy day, with a volunteer session at our church and so we did a lot of food prep the day before.  Everything was running right on schedule until Opal fell asleep minutes before we were supposed to leave the volunteer outing and head home.  She of course woke up as soon as we put her in her carseat, and so had a 5 minute nap the entire day.  When we got home, we had a few hours to finish getting the food ready for her party.  I had made one and a half cakes for her, so that the following day we could eat the smaller cake on her actual birthday.  Our kitchen is small, and with all of the food prep going on, I iced the cakes on top of our ceramic cook top stove.  Little did we know that Will had accidentally turned the wrong burner on the stove and as I moved the smaller cake to the granite counter top to clear up the stove, the glass pan exploded into thousands of pieces.  Glass confetti was everywhere - and worst of all, it sprinkled the larger cake like sugar crystals.  All of the cake was garbage.  I had tiny flecks of glass in my hands and arms and was lucky it wasn't worse.  To literally ice this cake of a day, while Will and I were busy cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, one of our children had a bathroom problem, and decided to clean it up themselves.  This is when it literally hit the fan.  With our guests due any minute now, I called my parents and they picked up an apple pie on the way to our house so that we could put a candle in something for Opal.  I did take a picture of the iced cake before it blew up, so at least we have that for the memory book.  Sadly, Opal did not like the apple pie, but seemed content to eat graham crackers, her favorite food anyways.  

I had put so much love and care into that made from scratch banana cake for my baby's first birthday, that it was really hard for me to get over putting it in the trash.  I finally had Will do it, several days later.   There was a silver lining though.  A few days prior to Opal's party, Will had cleaned off Luke's grave from the Christmas and birthday decorations.  It was all still in his trunk.  We had planned on going to the party store to let Opal pick out a birthday balloon for her party, but ran out of time with all of the clean up.  That's when Will remembered Luke's birthday balloon, and would you believe it still floated, almost a month later?  

I think Opal thoroughly enjoyed her party, and she did an amazing job, considering she only took a 5 minute nap that day.

The following day, we had a nice, quiet day at home with her.  

 A one year old doesn't need much, and so I encouraged the girls to make her gifts or regift her some of the toys they may have outgrown.  Emma made her a pillow case with a little help from me for her first, big girl pillow.  Emma also made her a piece of decorated paper, covered in packaging tape which turned out to be one of her favorite gifts, as Opal loves chewing on paper and this paper couldn't be choked on!

 Lucy gave Opal a backpack that she had outgrown, and Violet made Opal a set of birthday crowns, as well as gave her one of her favorite baby dolls named Bonnie the Bee.  I just loved seeing their generosity and creativity straight from their hearts for their beloved baby sister.  I made Opal a book about the day she was born (I made each of the girls this for their first birthday), and Will cut her name out of wood and painted it (which he did for each of the girls first birthday as well) to hang in her room.  Finally, she got a few books, some Duplos, and a baby doll that I found on eBay to match the baby doll that each of her sisters got on their first birthdays.  Since the doll came from eBay, it had no clothes, and of course I didn't remember this until two nights before her birthday.  I ended up using one of Opal's newborn sleepers, and cut it down to size and sewed it up and it fit like a charm!  In fact, I may do this for each of the girls' baby dolls!

 We made her a little batch of arrowroot cookies for her birthday, since I wanted her to have something a bit more special than graham crackers and I was all out of ripe bananas.  She liked the cookie, and got a kick out of us all singing to her and blowing out her candle as she repeated "hot", "hot".

This little lady is so very loved.  Here she is below, being supported with the arms of her family all around her, getting measured for the first time on our family growth chart.  I think this picture sums up our little lady in our family so well.

Happy first birthday Opal!  You have brought so much to our family, and we love you so very much!