Happy birthday, dear Rosie

Rosie turned one year old this weekend, and we celebrated with an intimate gathering of, oh, two dozen people. And we all had a blast!

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About two weeks before the big day birthday, I read a magazine article about “Pi Day.” This geek’s holiday comes every year on March 14 — which since it’s often written 3/14, reveals the first digits of Ï€ (pi). This is the mathematical constant, of course, whose value is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. I was delighted to realize that Rosie’s birthday fell on such a significant day, and I resolved to incorporate circles as often as possible into the party. This turned out to be pretty easy: we had two circular cakes (one even decorated with circular dots by Papa the Frosting Master [see video, below]), chocolate and vanilla circular cookies, circular tortilla chips, and spinach dip in a round bread bowl. We hope to explore this circle theme in future years — at least until Rosie insists that we stop! :)

I had great plans to dress Rosie in the same “first-birthday dress”:/news/2007/like-papa-like-lucy/ that Lucy wore (which is amazingly similar to Jon’s own first-birthday overalls). But on Saturday morning, I had a few minutes so I thought we’d try it on the birthday girl in advance — and, of course, I discovered that she could barely squeeze one arm into the dress. She is indeed a giant. (Why I thought it would fit, I do not know.) So I dug around in Lucy’s dresser and found a great 18-24 month dress that fit Rosie perfectly!

We laid out a “custom-made jigsaw puzzle”:http://upinpieces.com/ with a photo of Rosie on it for people to put together as they mingled. We were especially pleased with the quality of this puzzle — nice, stiff pieces, all different shapes, and we even customized a piece that spelled “Rosie” right in the middle. We also did a trial run of the new party game we invented, which we’re calling “Captionary.” We posted ten photos of Rosie around the house, numbered them, and asked guests to write their own captions (sweet, sassy, or silly) for the photos. After a time, we collected them, rated them, and then read out the most distinctive captions for each photo. It was definitely fun, although the caption-rating took more work (mid-party) than we had thought through. But it is worth it to get a caption like, “Look, Mom — I make my own bubbles!” for this “bath photo”:/news/2008/jolly/. (Kudos to Eric and “Allie”:/news/2006/friends-2/ for that one!)

Perhaps the highlight of the party was the birthday cake itself. Lucy was beside herself with joy to get to sing to Rosie and help her blow the candle out. Rosie carefully observed all the ceremony, but was understandably a bit hesitant to take part in the pyrotechnic ritual at this tender age. (See video, immediately below.) She did, however, enthusiastically participate in the gustatory part of the tradition, even inventing a “clever method of eating her cake”:/news/2009/first-birthday-cake/. It was fun to get some pictures of Rosie’s cake-covered baby-face, a pleasure we were denied on Lucy’s first birthday when she “refused her cake”:/news/2007/its-my-birfday/ outright. —post continues after 0’50” video—

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I was grateful that Rosie took a nice long nap in the afternoon, waking up about ten minutes into the party. After puzzling about all the people in the house for a few minutes, she definitely got into the swing of the celebration. We’re glad Rosie seemed to enjoy the party as much as we did.

Many happy returns, sweet Rose!

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