My Baby Girl is ONE!!!!!!!

My sweet little baby girl is ONE today!  

At this time one year ago today I was cuddling my precious little newborn baby girl who was just a few hours old.  Our 5th baby girl, our Anibella Hope, came into our lives & completely captivated our hearts at 11:19 am on October 28th, 2009!  She was a sweet, tiny little peanut weighing 6 pounds 7 ounces & measuring 19 1/4 inches long!  Anibella had beautiful deep blue eyes, soft, light brown, CURLY hair (all of our other girlies had completely straight hair so her hair was such a fun surprise!), the adorable signature Palmer button nose, a dimple on each of her kissable little cheeks & a content, sweet & happy disposition from the very beginning!  We were also surprised at how tiny she was because she was born at 39 weeks & 6 days, only ONE day early!  All of our other girls have been a week or even two weeks early & were all between 6 pounds & 7 1/2 pounds.  We thought for sure she would be our biggest because she stayed inside of Mommy for so long!  Well, God knew that our little sweetie girl needed to bake a little longer since she was such a tiny little baby!  When she was born, the nurse exclaimed, "she's such a tiny little peanut!" & I was like, "WHAT?!  How much does she weigh!?"  : )  Another fun & sweet surprise!  She was just PERFECT & we were in LOVE!  : )  I'm so grateful & I love that I got to experience a natural labor & delivery for Anibella's birth!  Her birth was such a wonderful experience that I wish I had done it naturally with my other 4 baby girls too!  Lest you get the wrong impression of me, I do not like pain.  I didn't want to go natural to prove that I could & I definitely don't enjoy pain.  I wanted to do it because I hoped that I would feel better more quickly after & because with all of my other girls I was about 7 cm or so before I even needed to start breathing through my contractions.  With all of our other girls & especially our last two, I delivered veryvery quickly.  My sweet Hubby told our nurse, several times, that they should be ready because when it's time for me to push, our babies come very fast!  She seemed to understand & kinda giggled about it.  Well, because Anibella is our fifth-born & because I had no medication to be able to stop my body from the natural pushing out process, she was actually BORN ON the "practice push"!  My nurse just wanted to see if I was ready & yep, I was!  I gave her one good "practice push" & Anibella was born so quickly that the only nurse in the room delivered her right on the bed with no sterile pad, no stirrups & only one glove while I was laying completely FLAT (including my legs!)!  (all you Mommy's will know how amazing THAT is!)  Anibella surprised her Daddy & especially our poor nurse!  Our amazingly wonderful & very competent nurse managed to lunge across me to push the call button with one hand while cradling our sweet newborn in her other hand (the gloved hand, thank goodness!) & just moments after Anibella was born, the doctor, 2 residents & 2 nurses all came running into our room!  They were shocked, to say the least, that Anibella was born so quickly & without any of the typical "okay-now-we're-gonna-push" stage!  They put my sweet baby girl right on my chest & I cried as I looked at her precious little face!  I was completely undone with emotion & love for her!  I was just amazed!  I was so grateful to God that He had given us our precious little Anibella, that she was born healthy & that she was in my arms!  Since I didn't have any medication, I was able to get up right away & walk around & I felt wonderful!  I was so grateful since with all of my other sweet girlies, I had noodle-legs for the first 4-6 hours after they were born!  Every time a nurse came into my room, they were all fascinated & they wanted to hear Anibella's birth "story" & they wanted to know how & why she was born without a doctor in the room!  So, evidently the hospital doesn't like that kind of thing (for valid liability issues, I'm sure) because the head nurse asked me several times why Anibella was born without a doctor, if I was actually told to stop pushing or keep pushing & what happened.  When I told them that I had a completely natural delivery & that she was born ON the PRACTICE push (which, of course, I couldn't help!), they all did the "Oh, I see!"  It was kinda funny!  : )  So, our sweet baby girl has a great birth story!  Anibella has been such a sweet & precious joy to our family!  She just has such a content, happy & sweet personality!  We love her so very much!  Anibella started walking at nine months old & she is doing amazing!  She walked everywhere now & she just learned how to stand up in middle of a room without holding on to anything!  She is an adventurous little baby!  She loves to climb!  She has learned how to climb up on the couch, our bed & pretty much anything!  She is saying, Mama, Dada, uh oh, all done, night night, sis sis & she just started saying I love you the day before her birthday!  : )  She plays patty cake (the "rolling" part is her favorite!), peekaboo, she blows kisses, waves with one or both hands & she absolutely LOVES to dance to ANY music!  It is SO stinkin cute!  Anytime she hears music or if we start singing, she will move her little shoulders, twist her little body from her waist, move her legs, waggle her little arms, move her head & bounce up & down!  I mean, she really boogies & it's adorable!  : )  She also just started doing something that we absolutely love & it totally cracks us up because it is so incredibly cute!  When we say "smile", she will shrug her little shoulders, tilt her little head sideways onto her shoulder & smile really big! (as if she's posing for a picture!)  Gah, she's SOOOOOOO precious!  : )  One of my very favorite things is to see the sweet relationship that Anibella has with her Daddy!  She loves to melt into him & cuddle on his chest!  Let me tell you, Anibella's Daddy ADORES her!  I love to see them cuddling, playing patty cake or my Hubby laughing at something cute that his littlest baby girl is doing!  It is so precious!  Another of my very favorite things is seeing how much Anibella's 4 big sissies love her!  They all truly love to be with her & play with her!  She is a very patient & enduring baby too!  She lets her sisters "mommy" her & love on her all the time AND she seems to love it too!  She is just genuinely a lovable, sweet, happy & content baby & she is just so much fun to be with!  I will say, a few times we have seen a little of the sinful nature that we know is inherent in all of us!  If she has something that she really wants, like Mommy's cell phone : ), & someone takes it away (since, of course, it's not safe to let her play with Mommy's cell phone!), she does a little angry squeal & scrunches her cute little nose all up!  We are working on that (of course!) & sin is not cute but she certainly is, which makes us have to use lots of self-control to not giggle & to deal with her little attitude properly!  : )  We look forward to seeing all that God has in store for our sweet little Bellie bugs!  HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY our precious Anibella Hope!  We LOVE you baby girl!  : )

We had a simple little family party here at home with just the seven of us & it was very sweet & special!  Anibella's Poppy & Gram were supposed to be here to celebrate her 1st Birthday with us but they had to reschedule their trip at the last minute.  We were sad that they couldn't come & we really missed having them here so I took lots of pictures of all of the sweet little moments so that they could feel like they were here with us!

There are a LOT of pictures in this slide show & I don't expect you to look through them all but I wanted to share all of the special moments of our sweet baby's first birthday with our family & friends who are like family too!

I couldn't find a 1st Birthday theme that I liked or that "went" with all of the pink, orange & white decorations that we already had so I made my own!  We called it "buttons & bows" & my sweet big helper girls did a lot to help me!  : )  The "A-N-I-B-E-L-L-A" letters that are hanging over her highchair are the letters I painted & decorated to hang on the wall in Anibella's nursery before she was born!  I love that we got to use them for her 1st Birthday party, that was really special to me!  : )  I made Anibella's smash cake & her cupcakes too.  This was the first time I had ever used fondant.  My friend encouraged me to make my own marshmallow fondant instead of buying it.  I'm so glad that I did because it tasted much better than regular fondant & it was so much cheaper!  The entire cake-making process took a while but it was so worth it to see my sweet little baby girl squishing it between her cute little baby fingers & the crumbs all over her little mouth!  : )  I made & colored the marshmallow fondant a day ahead so it could rest one day.  The next day I made her white cake from scratch.  It didn't taste as good as I hoped & it was dense, more like a pound cake & I was hoping it would be light & fluffy!  I'm going to keep looking for a good, homemade white cake recipe!  I also made my own buttercream frosting to use as a crumb coating under the fondant.  It tasted delicious but was not as thick as I thought it should be.  I'm moderately happy with how my cake turned out & I don't want to be discontent or ungrateful but you can definitely tell it was my first time!   I had to improvise a lot because I don't have most of the fondant tools that you need to do it on a regular basis.  I learned a lot, used muscles in my arms, shoulders & back that I forgot I had  : \  rolling out the fondant & had so much fun making my Anibella's cake!  My older girls were cute they kept encouraging me how great it looked & they said, "Oh Mommy, ANY Mommy would be SO HAPPY to have this cake for their baby's 1st birthday!  It's beautiful Mommy!"  : ) (I was actually really convicted when they were being so sweet & encouraging me because I realized that meant that they were picking up on the fact that I wasn't absolutely thrilled with how it turned out!  (even though I was trying to not show it)  I guess for how long it took & how much work it was I hoped it would look better & be less "bumpy" in places!  : )  I had to do a little heart searching on why I wanted, needed, CRAVED, it to be perfect!  YIKES!  Yep, needless to say, I had a long conversation with my kind God about that one!)  They were so sweet!  They follow their sweet & always encouraging Daddy's good example!  He was encouraging me that it looked amazing!  The most important thing is that my sweet birthday girl & my very kind & gracious family all LOVED it!  : )