A Simple Celebration for a One Year Old

With the approach of Echo's first Birthday I did a lot of reading up on first Birthday parties and ideas of how to celebrate. I had no idea what one does at a 1st Birthday party, the kids are too young for regular party games and as much as I love Birthdays I just couldn't get up any enthusiasm for throwing Echo a party. Instead of a party we decided to do a simple family celebration, here's what we did to celebrate this awesome little lady's special day!

We started off the day with a much anticipated trip to the zoo! Echo absolutely loves animals and even though it rained off and on we had a great time and had some amazing up close and personal time with the tigers and gorillas. An added bonus to the rainy day was that the zoo was practically empty so we had most of the exhibits to ourselves.

Echo got to ride the carousel for free for her Birthday and we let her pick out a toy from the gift shop. Her favorite animals were the golden lion tamarins and the birds.

After the zoo we went for lunch in midtown and then headed home while Echo grabbed a quick nap in the car. Then it was on to presents and "cake".

Here Echo is coloring with her new crayons

And here she is playing with her new blocks.

Opening presents

I really wanted to make Echo a real cake, I was actually very excited about it, however it turns out she's not a big cake fan. Her absolute favorite thing is fruit so I decided to make a cake out of that instead. I cute a seedless watermelon in to the shape of a cake and frosted it with whipped cream and decorated it with strawberries and blueberries. This is a great alternative to regular cake if you don't want you baby having sweets.

The cake was a huge hit, it's probably the most fun she's ever had eating anything.

After cake she had a nice long nap and a low key evening at home playing with her new toys. All in all it was a great first Birthday and one that she really enjoyed. Maybe next year I will be up for planning a big party for her and her friends but for this year I think something smaller was just the ticket.