The best laid plans, as always, went utterly awry, but had included homemade sangria, necessitated finding our punch bowl and glasses, and the baking of sugar cookies, as party favours. We had such big plans, which included taking an official birthday portrait in their princess dresses, courtesy of Greatest Aunt Dianne, and generally letting the sparrows charm the pants off of our guests. So many glasses, so many cookies iced, and then, so many visits to the ER, which eventually necessitated calling all of the out of town and out of country guests and asking them to cancel their hotel reservations and forgive us, because the big Birthday Celebration was officially canceled. How cute would these cookies have been, in tulle bags with pink and white ribbons, as birthday favors? I iced my ass off. Instead, they just went to waste (ie, we just ate them ourselves!)
As it turned out, canceling was the right thing to do – poor, poor G spent her birthday a very unhappy and sick little girl, with a high fever, chills, and stomach upset. Even getting dressed for the day was too much for her, and her better moments were spent sleeping on Daddy’s lap, while Daddy rocked her.
But she did rally for some lunch. We gave up any pretense of formality, and put the kids back in their pajamas for the rest of the day, which they loved, and fed them a little lunch. G was a rockstar, rising above both being very sick AND cutting two big back molars at the same time, and had a little to eat.
She may be in pain, but she is a trooper, giving us a few smiles for the camera and telling us little stories.
M would appreciate it if we would PUT DOWN THE DAMNED CAMERA AND GIVE HER SOME CARROTS ALREADY. 
We didn’t have a birthday cake, mostly because when you spend your week walking the floor with your baby girl and her 105 degree fever while simultaneously entertaining her not-sick sister, time to bake seems to disappear. So, we whipped up some cupcakes from a mix, and let them go to town. M is demonstrating her special skill with fingerpainting… herself. Notice the fancy bibs are gone, and now we are wearing wipeable oilcloth.
“Oh, I coulda had a V-8!” G does this little forehead slap sometimes that cracks us up. As it turns out, nobody was so into eating the cupcakes – they don’t get processed food, or sugar, so I doubt it tastes good for them. And… sacrilege … we ended up throwing the rest out, as we forgot to eat them before they went bad. But chocolate icing makes an excellent finger paint.
We got the girls sock monkeys for their birthday, from an Etsy shop called BadaBabies and were really thrilled – not only are they adorable, but their names are embroidered on the back. Every girl needs a sock monkey.
M demonstrates her excellent Monkey Biting technique. She had a wonderful time unwrapping and biting her monkey.
G, on the other hand, was having none of it. She was worn out, sick, and in No Mood For Nonsense.
She finished out her birthday on daddy’s lap, which as we all know is the only place to go when you are not feeling well.
So, we didn’t have the kind of first birthday that we wanted them to have, but we did have a day together as a family, we watched the Elmo Birthday movie, we napped, we ate carrots, and went to bed early, and we vowed that their SECOND birthday will just have be spectacular, to make up for their first. And since we plan for them to have 99 more chances at a great birthday, its okay that this one wasn’t so great.