It’s so hard to believe that my baby girl is a year old now.  It seems like she’s always been in my life; I can’t imagine life without her now.  At the same time, it seems like she’s been here no time at all, it’s gone by so fast.

Milly was making some noises this morning before Amanda left for work.  I don’t think she was fussing, she was just making noise.  Amanda asked if I’d mind if she went in to wish Milly a happy birthday, knowing that she likely wouldn’t go back to sleep, but I told her it was okay anyway.  I mean, how many first birthdays will Milly have?  (The answer is one, of course.)

Anyway, I ended up going into the nursery and half-watching Milly while I half-slept on the floor.  The door was closed and the nursery is a pretty safe room with a number of toys, so she stayed entertained for a good while.  After that we went downstairs and played together for a while.

I set Milly up in her new booster seat to feed her breakfast.  She looks like such a big girl sitting in it, but she seemed pretty much indifferent sitting in it compared to sitting in the highchair.

I got a bit of work done after Milly went down for her nap at about 9:15 and Amanda came home early.  She was able to get her long day shifted to Wednesday (I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon) and we went to the park for Milly’s birthday.  She had her first picnic for her first visit to Greenfield Lake where she saw her first ducks and even her first alligator.  (It was in the water, not too far from the shore, but not all that close, and it was maybe four feet long.)

Milly on the playground at Greenfield Lake on her first birthdayIt was pretty hot out.  We were going to go down a slide together, but all the slides were either too hot or had puddles of water at the end of them.  We went for a small walk and passed by a covered cookout area with a bunch of people in it.  They were the ones who told us about the alligator and one of them asked how old the baby was.  When I said she was turning a year old today one of them started singing Happy Birthday to her.  He may or may not have been drunk.

As I said, it was hot (well into the nineties), so we didn’t go on much of a walk.  Instead we sat down in a grassy area where Amanda and Milly played a bit together as I took pictures.  After that we went back to the car and stopped by Amanda’s work, which is pretty much across the street from the park, so they could all say “hi” to Milly.

Milly went down for a nap when we got back and I got back to work.  We got a call and were told that there had been some fraud committed against us.  Apparently someone used Amanda’s check card to buy $300-worth of gift cards in California yesterday, even though Amanda was here, across the country, and her check card was with her.  There were a few other attempted purchases, but they were blocked.  Amanda alerted the store where the gift cards had been purchased and they were able to cancel them, but that didn’t get us our $300 back.

Come to think of it, if they canceled the gift cards, shouldn’t that put the money back into our account?  Hmm.  Regardless, the bank is sending us paperwork to fill out to get our money back.  Amanda was surprisingly cool about the whole deal.

Milly enjoys macaroni and cheese and green beans, so Amanda decided to make that for her birthday dinner.  Sadly, the green beans came with less… whatever the liquid is in the green bean cans (green bean juice?) and they ended up burning and possibly ruining the pot they were in.  Despite that, Milly seemed to really enjoy her mac & cheese dinner.

Zach Dotsey