The Lewis Family: Leila and Eva Turn One!

I know all of us mothers say the same thing but HOLY CRAP MY BABIES ARE ONE! They have full-blown attitudes now and by they I mean Eva. Man, she's a drama queen! And a bully! And an attention hog! She's got two inches on Leila and takes full advantage of the overhead view to smack her sister's head, rip her bows out of her hair and if there's no bow to grab she just grabs hair and pulls, hard. I hate to say it but I'm actually a bit proud of Leila since this last week she's started standing up for herself. And, by standing up for herself I mean smacking, ripping, and pulling back. I'm glad for this since Leila's developed a little habit of holding her breathe when she gets hurt which sometimes just leads to me blowing in her face and begging her to breathe while other times her lips and mouth turn blue and she finally lets out a tiny whimper before collapsing into my arms. She always comes to a second later and is just really tired for a minute then back to her normal self but still, it's scary. We're working on understanding "no" but as all of you that have ever experienced a one-year-old know learning "no" takes a long time. And by a long time I mean FOREVER. Despite their antics they actually love playing together and truly look sad and lost when the other isn't around.

So, back to them turning one. I'm quickly realizing that the busyness and expense of the holiday season is going to carry way into January for me for a long time. After flying to St. George for Thanksgiving, driving 15-hours to and from Salt Lake the week before Christmas, enduring the actual Christmas holiday and all those festivities, plus the New Year (although that shouldn't really count since we just sat on our butts at home and stayed up barely long enough to watch that stupid ball drop and then crashed into bed like senior citizens) I was seriously doubting whether I would actually go to the effort to throw a bash for two little ones who would rather chew on Tupperware than attend a party.

I'm convinced I would have regretted it if I hadn't, so party we did.

Mmmm, yummy beverage and cupcake table. My great friend Taneev did an awesome job making the punch after (in my pre-party frantic haste) I pretty much threw the ingredients at her with zero instructions on how to actually make it. I kept getting compliments but could take none of the credit. It turned out better then if I had even done it myself I'm sure.

Great job on the sandwichs, Mom. So delicious! (Again I threw the ingredients at someone with hardly any instructions. I'm sure they were so glad they volunteered to help.)

Ah, this one I actually did myself. I had run out of people to throw stuff at. :)

The cupcakes turned out so cute! Special thank you to great friends Julie and Amber who stayed until almost midnight the night before making sure the frosting was the perfect color pink and cutting out endless fondant flowers.