Yesterday we celebrated Evie’s first birthday with a bit of a do at our place, it kicked off at 10AM and we closed up shop around 1:30PM when the candle was well and truly burned down with most of the little people in attendance.

Claire decided that a ladybug themed party ought to do the trick and set about creating a whole swag of items to boot, starting with cute handmade ladybug invitations, leaf garlands featuring tiny ladybugs, a not to scale ladybug cake and much more – very cute!

In attendance we had:

• Andrew, Belinda & Ben
• Anita
• David & Karen
• Emily, Will, Oliver & Milla
• Lorraine & Sterle
• Lucy & Michael
• Nigel, Trudy & Noah
• Phil, Tammi & Grace

Everyone spoiled Evie beyond belief with some of the most gorgeous presents getting around. We’ve been really lucky actually, only the other day Claire and I commented to one another that Evie doesn’t really have that many purely girly toys. After her 1st birthday, that has changed with some beautifully unique looking dolls, knitted toys and much more.

The boys had a great time playing together and between them managed to pretty much disassemble the play area in the living room and all of the toys. Suffice to say, it looked like they’d had fun! Watching Milla & Noah toddle off around the house was great, little people have such cute walking styles! It was nice to catch up with everyone, however briefly and have a quick chat. I think we need to find a way to do it more regularly that doesn’t revolve around a birthday, they don’t come frequently enough.

Thank you to everyone that was able to make it today, Claire & I really appreciate it and realise that you all needed to drive a distance to make it. A special thank you to Phil & Tammi for attending, they brought baby Grace along for her first birthday party and she is only a tiny we dot of a girl and around 10 weeks old.

Next up, a whopping second birthday this time next year. If we end up going down to the park again like we did for Hugo’s second birthday, we’re bound to have a great time again.

Time sure flies when you’re having fun, it is hard to believe that Evie Charlotte Lattimore has reached her second major milestone – turning 1 year old!

The last year has been amazing with Evie in our lives, Claire & I have certainly been blessed. When Hugo was born, Claire & I couldn’t believe how lucky we were that Hugo was a good baby and figured our luck would run out on our next one for sure. As it turned out, I think Evie is even more relaxed than Hugo was and just goes a long to get along. We break her routine and schedule regularly and she doesn’t mind, misses a morning sleep semi-regularly and doesn’t seem to care too much and from time to time will even miss an afternoon sleep as well for special occasions and just keeps on trucking.

Evie has been a great sleeper, just like Hugo was – in fact I think better as she tolerates even more noise around the house and it doesn’t unsettle her. We followed the same basic strategy from Tizzie Halls amazing Save Our Sleep book again and it all just clicked. We pop Evie down for her naps, put her music on and give her a favourite bunny and usually within a few minutes she has self settled & is sound asleep – fantastic!

One thing that Evie has dropped the ball on compared to Hugo has been her movement, the concept of crawling for Evie just seems foreign. We’d been told by countless friends that girls do all of that much sooner than boys do, so we were expecting to have Evie crawling around feverishly from 6 months but it didn’t happen. We’ve now just passed the 1 year old mark and she is a proficient bottom scooter but refuses to crawl. In the last week or two she has been making a few attempts that kind of look like the beginning of crawling but no actual movement has happened as a by product yet. On the flip side, she does love standing and walking along hanging onto a little finger – so maybe she’ll walk before she can crawl.

So far we’ve been really lucky with food, Evie will eat anything we put in front of her, even cream cheese as I found out by mistake! With Hugo, we started out quite well but by his first birthday his eating became more and more fussy and simply refused to eat foods that he’d loved previously. We don’t have any idea why that happened and Claire tried countless different things to get him to eat the food that we wanted but it just didn’t happen unfortunately. At this stage, Evie is still going gangbusters eating everything so hopefully that’ll continue into the future.

Watching Evie and Hugo play together has been great, Evie absolutely adores Hugo. To begin with Hugo wasn’t all that keen on Evie joining our family but soon warmed up to the idea and now Hugo gives Evie kisses all the time. As Evie has matured and her personality has developed, their interactions have become more complex. For reasons only known to Evie, Hugo and only Hugo has the ability to make her laugh, chuckle and cackle like no one else can.  I can only imagine what is going to happen when Evie gains her independence with walking, she’ll be chasing Hugo around the house constantly and wanting to do everything that he does.

I really can’t wait to see what the next year brings with Evie, it is going to be exciting to see her continue to develop and I think that she is going to be best friends with Hugo.

This afternoon Claire mentioned on facebook that she loves watching Hugo and I do things together, in this instance it was Hugo helping me mow the lawn.

A friend asked if Claire had a photo and I was going to link to an old post of this photo but for the life of me, I can’t find it – so I apologise if I’ve posted this before.

This is an old photo taken in April 2010, so Hugo was just a little fella then and Evie wasn’t born yet – seems like a lifetime ago already!

Hugo loves to be involved, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing; it could be gardening, vacuuming or grocery shopping -he just loves it.

One of his new favourite things to do is help Claire when she is cooking or baking. We need only say the word ‘cooking’ and Hugo will go and drag one of the dining room chairs over to the bench and stand up in anticipation!

So far Hugo has helped with pikelets and chocolate chip biscuits. He has learned a few skills of the trade as well, he can help crack eggs, is great at holding measuring spoons, knows how to ‘tap’ measuring spoons and cups to empty them out, can stir with a wooden spoon but most of all he loves to use the electric beater.

Like any good cook, he also appreciates tasting throughout the whole process!

Since Hugo was a baby, he has had a little bull plush toy named Boris.

Originally, Boris was just a sleeping aid for bed time but little bit by little bit was allowed out of his cot until Hugo took Boris everywhere with him around the house & in the car.

When Hugo upgraded from the cot to a big boy bed, we noticed a peculiar behaviour – he wanted to bring other things with him into bed such as a favourite toy car.

Now that Hugo can get out of bed, he regularly selects favourite items from around his bedroom to have in his bed with him at night time. At the moment those toys are a pink money box pig, a plastic container with a bunch of cotton reels and string, a wooden toy bus and a plastic motorcycle police officer.

Hugo also gets out of bed at night time and sleeps by the door of his bedroom on the carpet. Before the new behaviour started, it was just Hugo and Boris – however now that he has treasures, they have to come to!