birthday party!

on friday, penny turned one year old!  that's crazy!  i took the day off of work, and baked her a cake that we shared with her grandparents and aunt jodi.  in honor of the birthday girl's favorite food, it was a banana cake, and in honor of birthdays, it had chocolate buttercream (it's this cake, if you'd like to make one for your little monkey, but i was too crafted out to make the monkey face on it).  i think she liked it!

thank you, grandpa dan, for the amazing pictures!

i made her a cupcake crown because she is the queen of birthdays!

on sunday, we had our third (almost) annual holiday brunch.  alex and i cook WAY too much food, and have over as many friends and family as we can fit in our apartment.  the star of this year's spread were the BBQ bacon wrapped jalepeno poppers.  after our guests left, i think i ate half of them myself.  after the brunch, alex and i were entirely too sick of cooking to think about dinner, so penny joined the ranks of so many american children and ate chicken nuggets!  shaped like dinosaurs!

yum!

though it's incredibly hard to believe:

we went to the doctor for penny's check up.  she has dropped down to the 25th percentile for weight at 19 pounds 5 oz, though you'd never know it from her tummy!  apparently that's just fine, as she's working so hard on walking, she's expected to drop in percentile.  she's right on at 80th percentile for height at a staggering 30 inches.  we've moved from formula to whole milk, and penny has been given the go ahead for every food there is (except for nuts, peanuts and shellfish).  the doctor told us she's doing great!
that's one year done!  she's not going to be a baby for much longer!