She's, like, seven in cat years.

Hello. It's my birthday. 

Yes indeed! It was Tabby's big day last Saturday! And the bakery celebrated by renaming her.

 Here it is in close up in case you missed it.

To be fair, this is how all our Persian relatives say her name, so it's sort of apt.


This was one of those parties that was way more for the adults, but for the few kiddos that were there, this makeshift ball-pit provided much entertainment.

Then it came time to eat the cake. You know how babies always dive into the cake with verve and enthusiasm?  Tabs -- not so much. She took a taste and then proceeded to grab at it and enjoy the sensation of smushing it between her fingers.

And then she fed me. Girlfriend fed me the whole piece of cake. If the picture was larger, you could tell that I have whipped cream (seriously, I am a whipped-cream-on-birthday-cake convert. It's decadent and refreshing at the same time. Frosting drools -- whipped cream rules!) all over my face. In fact, if you look closely, you can see it already on my dress. So excited was she about feeding me -- and can we all just note how sweet that is? -- that I actually had to go change and scrub down about five minutes after this picture was taken. Side note: whipped cream residue is an amazing facial moisturizer.

Then we opened presents. Or rather, Ruby opened the presents (except this one); Tabitha played with a balloon. Or rather, Tabitha tried to eat the balloon; Mommy ran over to take it out of her hands every thirty seconds. 

And what is a Tabby like at one year old?

She's willful. When she wants to go outside, she will sign for outside until her hands fall off, and she will yell at you until you do her bidding. 

She eats like a locust. Until she's done (abruptly), at which point she'll look at you... and drop the remains of her meal on the floor. Slowly. Deliberately.

She's got a wicked sense of humor. Her peek-a-booing skills are clever and quick. 

She's fearless. This one sucks as far as I'm concerned. It means that she does stuff like stick her face underwater in the bath (for real? what the hell baby does this voluntarily?). She doesn't fuss about it, unless she accidentally gets water up her nose, but still. It's not normal. And it means that she's also a climber. So, we have this in her room:

I left her in what I thought was her childproofed room for literally a minute (LITERALLY -- I went to go pee), and she had climbed up to the second shelf. Seriously, just kill me now. I do not want to live through the anxiety and stress that these two children are going to cause me. (OK, just kidding, I totally do. For every stressful moment, they make me laugh for at least ten more moments.) She also climbs on the our little kids chairs and up on to the little kids table, where she tried to stand up earlier today. She backwards climbs out the front and back doors. She would've already tumped out of her crib by now if the bumper was solid, but since it just folds down when she steps on it, luckily we have another few months before she jailbreaks on us. Seriously, we're going to have get one of these, and she's going to start calling me Zookeeper instead of Mama:

And, of course, she's doing all this willful, funny, fearless stuff faster and faster these days, because she is walking her little butt off all over the place. More like ten or so steps at a time, but she's getting faster and more sure of herself everyday.

Happy birthday, my curly-haired little heart-attack-waiting-to-happen. You are a peach. I love you.