WEEKEND EXPERIENCES: My baby girl turns 1, and EVERYONE comes to her party! :)
Hi everyone on HIVE and especially the Weekend Experiences Community. I am still quite new to HIVE. Mostly I’ve been posting about my music that I write and perform with fellow HIVER @clairemobey, as well as about my other main hobby of surfing the various beautiful surf spots in my hometown of Cape Town, South Africa.
Recently my friend @zakludick told me about some other communities I should check out, and one of the first where I realized that I’ve really been missing out... is this one!
So, what did I get up to this weekend?
Well! Let’s start on 30 July 2021, when my life changed forever as my darling wife and I welcomed little Madison, our first baby daughter, into the world! Now raising a baby is never easy, but my wife Julia and I have been blessed on two counts:
•Little Madison (or Maddy) has a very sweet, chilled, giggling temperament as far as babies go, and for the most part has only cried for a good reason like hunger, tiredness, teething, etc… She was quite good at sleeping in her own room from a young age and only waking up to feed once or twice a night as well…
•The other blessing is how supportive our friends and family have been! We have aunties, grandparents and great-aunties who love to visit and help. We have 3 godmothers who love to visit and help. We were afraid that our friends would get bored of us and stop visiting, but they have stayed true and all seem genuinely enchanted by our little baba.
So, when it was time to organize her first Birthday Party this Saturday 30 July 2022, we realized that about 50-60 people would want to be there, and that it would be a serious celebration! Here in South Africa, we are still getting used to being able to have proper parties like this, after years of covid-19 restrictions having finally been relaxed significantly quite recently. This made the event even happier!
The birthday girl had a lot of fun and received a lot of love and cuddles - in the bottom middle picture she's having a little snooze after all the exhausting fun!
More highlights - in the bottom middle picture she is looking a bit perplexed at everyone singing Happy Birthday for her!
The beautiful cake that Julia made! - several other friends are also talented bakers and brought cakes and treats...
I put up a screen showing a looping slideshow of pictures from all 52 weeks of little Madison's life so far... here's the first slide showing that she was born with a good head of dark hair...
And here's the last slide! Her hair has grown blonder over the year and the first teeth have arrived!
I'm interested and eager to see if Maddy enjoys either of my two main hobbies... (probably too eager and I should calm down a bit!) Here's her grandpa pushing her across the pool (towards my waiting hands) on a soft surfboard when she was barely 6 months old! I remember her quite enjoying this with a big smile on her face!
As she has approached her first birthday I have noticed a distinct preference for musical toys. She has been blowing on penny-whistles, shaking rattles, drumming on things, she seemed to understand how pressing a piano keyboard made noises, and she's been reaching over to strum my guitar when I play it - well that's very exciting for me! How about a little ukelele as a birthday present? I will leave it for her in an open tuning, that will sound nice when strummed even without a second hand holding a chord (just yet)...
Well it was a lovely day, and I honestly think my wife Julia should consider a career in party-planning! She really made it a special day for our darling little girl! The beer and bubbles flowed for the adults, and we stuffed our faces with cake and candy-floss and I actually got a belly-ache! The babies and children all got little party-packs to take home as well! Now it's Sunday night and we're all partied out!
I think our own birthdays are going to be low-key affairs after this! I think we can only plan one party like that one per year! Haha!
THE END
This is just so beautiful, Maddison is just so cute and amazing. She's little but it feels like she understands everything around her perfectly and that's just so cool for a one year old child.
I wish her all the best and many more years to come, much love from Hope little Maddy ❤️🌹.
Her cake was so beautiful and it looks really tasty too, it made me crave for some, lol. Your wife did a really good job with the cakes.
Celebrating one per year is not bad at all, you guys are one after all 🥰.
Thank you so much! Yes Maddy seems to be an intelligent child who is always eager to learn! Of course that means putting everything in her mouth but she seems to learn what not to try a second time!
Also on the slightly scary side requiring constant supervision - she also seems to have inherited my father's love of climbing things (he was a famous mountaineer and rock-climber by South African standards!). She is light but getting strong!
Yes there are some things like that and I'm happy you guys are there to guide her 😊👍.
Yes, most children always love to raise those their little legs above the ground, lol. I hope she don't hurt herself 😢. Getting such a thing from your Dad is not bad at all but she has to wait a little more to start rehearsing, hehe.
I'm sure she will be strong, really strong and determined too.
I needed to be at Maddy’s party. Just how many damn cakes did you guys make?
With the way his hands were still stretched in Maddy’s direction, I have a feeling grandpa followed Maddy closely until she was half way in your hands.
Haha - well my wife actually got diplomas from SA Chef's Academy, and her surname before she married me was literally BAKER! She made the pink Hello Kitty cake and decorated another.
Of course it means she has other friends who like to bake (or are also proper chefs) and they all chipped in to make a cake or the cookies as well! It turned out to be a LOT, but luckily we had a lot of guests to share it with!
Interesting account name you've got there - is everything okay? Where are you from?
Must be nice having a wife that bakes:) All the free cakes haha.
I’m Ghanaian, and yes I’m okay. I didn’t really put much thought into choosing my username, but the story behind why I chose this one is a long story that you can read about in my intro post
Sorry about the late reply. I missed some of my notifications.
Wow dude, I read your intro post and what a story! I see this is a new account but you used to have a different account and should know your way around HIVE by now?
Yeah man, if something offers you money for nothing, then it's too good to be true. Even in normal investing you have to accept that higher rewards come with higher risk, and therefore you should diversify and have some things with low risk as well, even if they grow slowly. At least with HIVE, you are only risking your time that would have been spent doing Reddit or Facebook where you get nothing...
Congratulations on being so close to graduating at such a young age. I actually studied Chemical Engineering so we probably have some major classes in common!
I don't know a lot about Ghana, but just the other day I have fallen in love with watching talented people play the kashaka (asalato or cas cas), which is two shakers attached together with string... they are able to make amazing rhythms out of a very simple looking instrument! I love writing and making music, so now I'm inspired to find some or even make something similar myself!
Yhh kinda. I didn’t do much exploring and engagement on my old account and my content on it was really crap lol. That’s why I left it to create this one. Fresh start!
Thanks man. Studied? Tell me about it some time. I’d love to read your experience and maybe some old memories to laugh at:)
Lol you know something even I don’t know about my own country. I’m disappointed. I’ll check it out sometime.
SO. MUCH. CAKE. I couldn't try them all so @zakludick and I spent the drive home with the sadz about the cake we couldn't fit in our tummies 🤣🤣 I did get to have champagne and cake for breakfast though!!
Seriously, congratulations to you and your beautiful wife for raising such a gorgeous young lady. I have no doubts she'll be catching up very quickly and probably overtaking us in our music and on her surfboard (rather that than a pony, hey 🤣).
Happy Birthday Maddy 💕🎂🎊
I don't know - she got to try sitting on a real horse when we visited a friend's farm when she was about 6 months old! You should have seen her face! I will send you the pictures! She also loves toy horsey rides!
oh dear. I'll pray for your wallet 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣