1 year

Wow, what a day! And I thought I'd be in bed by now. I worked hard until after 5 am last night, getting the apartment ready, and bake and assemble the cake. I finished it with the animals and candle just before bringing it out.
I set my alarm for 12, and as you can imagine, after 2 busy nights of going to bed around 5 am, I was beat. But as a Mom you still do what you've got to do, so I fed the kids their lunch meal. There was still so much I wanted/needed to do before my family's arrival at 2:30 pm!
Randy was still mounting the last big shelf, while I needed to fill the balloons with air, and hang the "happy birthday" signs up. Of course they couldn't have assembled those myself, but I had to punch out the holes and string the letters up. That way I got to mix the pink and blue, and have two signs.
I bought an electric balloon pump, which helped me fill the balloons fast. However, it scared the kids, while I was trying to figure out how to use it, and all I could do was try to calm them with my voice. Especially when a balloon blew up, they did not like that very much. Later it turned out that Emmy was actually scared of the balloons when he was crawling around and would encounter one! Unfortunately I could never figure out how to make it work with the other balloons, so there was no "1" balloon in the end. I was also annoyed at the end of the day, when I realized that I had been so stressed that I forgot to put their crowns with a 1 on their heads.
I can tell you, that I was stressed ALL day long, from getting up, until they were in bed. I was running around all day long, trying to manage everything, never stopping for a minute. I was REALLY stressed when my family already arrived at 2 pm, when I had expected them at 2:30. I was still eating the omelet Randy had made, and had not put on my nice clothes or anything yet. There was so much I was still gonna do! Oh well.
I think the babies were stressed too, as neither one of us had had time to be or play with them. That changed with everyone's arrival. They never entered their play area again for the rest of the day. Emmy had slept late in the morning, at noon, but not Tammy, so she got really tired soon and simply fell asleep. She ended up missing the cake being brought in! I guess she'll have the pictures to look at later. She slept in my brother's arms, my sister-in-law's arms, and on me, before finally waking up and joining in the fun.
I put a sparkler on the cake and a "1" candle and we all sang when I brought it in. Grandma then helped Emmy blow out the candle, and Mommy cut the cake and distributed it. It was so nice to use our new living room for the very first time this way! And now there was actually room for all of us and the table!
Randy brought out some icecream, as you cannot have cake without icecream in Mississippi, and I was surprised that everyone welcomed it! And they all gave the babies some when I was not looking! Their first sugar rush!
After cake and coffee it was time for the gifts. The adults helped them open them, and they got lots of nice and exciting toys. There are busy play times ahead!
Emmy and Sammy had never slept again, so they got pretty tired. Sammy was once again put into the little bed late in the day and took a nap, which meant once again that it took him a long time to fall asleep a little later, even though he had been woken up for dinner. Emmy and Tammy were tired too, and so we needed to get dinner going.
All my family said their good-byes, and we started feeding them their last meal. As is the case most of the time, Tammy was so tired she ate little, and Emmy needed to be fed in my arm as he refused to get into the chair. Again they were dirty and I put them into the dry bathtub. Emmy freaked out right away, even without water in it. I cleaned him up and put him to bed, and then Tammy. They were both so tired, that it did not take them long to fall asleep. Then Sammy came and we played our game of him turning on his back and me turning him back on his belly, as he can only sleep on his belly. The exhaustion just washed over me, and I just wanted to lie down and take a nap. I finally took Sammy to bed with me, but he was awake, and so we were playing for a while. I gave him some milk, and was surprised when he finally fell asleep faster than I had expected. I still stayed in the chair for a while because I was too tired to get up, and then lay down on our bed for a few minutes. After a few minutes of just lying down, I decided to get up and get to work.
There were lots of dishes and a living room to clean up. It was also time to eat some dinner. Randy was still working on finishing mounting the last row of shelves to the wall and each other.
Like I had said, I had planned to go to bed earlier to catch up on some sleep, but then I found that I had taken 212 pictures today. That's a lot of pictures to edit the names of, choose the best, edit them, order them, upload them and caption them. And then I decided it was too much for tonight and stopped in the middle to write my update. Tomorrow you'll get to see all those wonderful pictures! It's 2 am and I'd really like to get to bed soon. Amazingly, tonight it's only Sammy who has needed milk so far. The other two must also have been so tired from today they are not even waking up to drink. Last night they both woke up a lot.