Sterling Suite: Summer's First Birthday

Wow! A year down, and this month alone has almost made it feel like a second year with Summer being hit with everything under the sun at once. The night before her birthday party she had a horrible night's sleep, which seemed to herald in a sleep regression, as well teething very badly (both the bottom two teeth came in together, in the end), and seemed to be sick on her actual birthday as she was so fussy and not very happy at all on her special day in Magic Kingdom. We had a good day in the end, but poor girl definitely deserves a re-do. She had her first birthday doctor appointment on Wednesday and she got so many shots it prolonged her misery, poor thing. But we're through it all now!

If her pink lemonade theme seemed a little too on the nose, what can I say, she was also named Summer and born in summer and that wasn't exactly the plan, but as a second born myself, I am incredibly sensitive to the second not getting the same things the first one did, so I knew she was going to not only have a big first birthday party, but she was also going to need her own backdrop/prop à la Cafe Sophie. Originally what I would have loveddddd to do was an ice cream theme and build her an ice cream cart, but that would have been waaaaay more expensive and complex so we took it down a notch and AJ created the lemonade stand of my dreams for her. I told him what I wanted, he built it, and I painted it (with help from Sophie and Auntie Kit Kat!)

Sophie set up camp to supervise the
set up on the playground ha!

The day was indeed hot, and somehow this party felt so much more overwhelming than Sophie's had been, and I feel like I never got around to refilling the lemonade dispensers with ice or even getting to play with Summer much. But we had a nice day with our family and friends, and what was crazy to see was the sheer amount of kids that were here compared to Sophie's first birthday a few years ago - all of us have added more to our brood since then! And we were so touched at all the people who came from so far to celebrate Summer with us.

My cake girl got covid and had to back out so this
was a sad last-minute replacement from Ralph's
womp womp

Summer and her godparents

Aftermath of the kid rager - babies
passed out in sinks

The next day, on her actual birthday, we went to Disneyland and battled heat and fussiness in the morning (all of us) and after lunch and the worst of the heat, we had a much better day. Plus we got on some rides I had really wanted to share with Sophie that she hadn't done yet (like Peter Pan and the Runaway Railway), and both girls had a marvelous time on Small World.

Tram ride in - should've seen they
would be fussy with these stank eyes

Can you see how hot we were from this picture?

Trying to cool down in the Tiki Room

Tried to get the sombrero on her head

We enjoyed being broke down in Small
World's air conditioning

AJ struggling with the Wordle

We stayed until after the fireworks show and then Sophie and I went to get on Alice in Wonderland before it re-opened and got on pretty quickly. Sophie loved it (little does she remember this was her first ride ever on her first birthday) and couldn't stop talking about it and has since loved watching the Disney movie, which makes me so happy, both because I love that movie and also because it means she can still probably handle the old-school Disney flat animation and won't be a stuck-up Pixar kid.

Us on Alice!

It took us all week to get to Summer's presents, and even then we would only open a few each night, but Sophie had a great time helping Summer to open her gifts and both of them playing with them all.