Let the Festivities Begin!

I'm often guilty of burying the lead, so in a joint effort to make the point of this post clear and make the lead picture (that shows up on Facebook) a doozy, this is a post about first birthday celebrations.
Little G isn't quite one year old, but we're close. Schedules being what they are, we visited my parents in Hanover over the weekend and celebrated LG's birthday. It's really just the first 1st birthday celebration. First of at least three, I think.

As first 1st celebrations go, this was pretty good. You can't tell from the picture above, but LG was looking particularly classy.
She spent a good portion of the weekend standing on her own, and even took a few steps every now and again, just to make sure everyone was good and impressed with her.

Being new to birthdays, LG had plenty of things to figure out. She had gotten presents last Christmas, but her dexterity left a little to be desired at the time. She wasn't sure what to do with the wrapped presents at first, since we generally don't approve when she just starts ripping things. But once she realized we were egging her on rather than stopping her, she got into it.
Heck, she even liked opening clothes! Although she did go straight for the tissue paper once she had the boxes open.
But the main event at any 1st birthday party is the cake. We've seen the kind of mess she can make when someone else is feeding her, so we were all very curious as to how much of a mess she'd make when left to her own devices. The story is often told how I pasted my eyes shut with icing on my 1st birthday. There's even 8mm film of the whole event. (And that sentence made me feel way older than anything I've posted to this blog so far.)

As with the unwrapping of gifts, she was a little timid at first. I think she was waiting for someone to stop her.
But as you can see at the top of the post, that didn't last long.
Luckily, she had some help with cleanup.
Of course, that effort was mostly focused on the chair, so we had to make a beeline for the bathtub. Hollie may have gotten a little messy on the way.
All in all, first 1st birthday went well. This can only mean more present pandemonium and cake carnage for second 1st birthday. I look forward to sharing it with you.

Bonus: Here's some video of the cake gorging. It's kind of awesome, but mostly to Hollie and me.