Let’s not kid ourselves. A baby doesn’t give a flying poodle about her first birthday. Just keep changing her diaper and bringing out the milk on demand, and she’s a happy camper. No, no, baby’s first birthday is a celebration of her parents. And in our case, of her brother’s ability to tolerate sharing his parents’ affection for twelve whole months! Cub was definitely more excited about his sister’s birthday than she was and has been more interested in her presents than she is.
July was a very busy month at the Den, starting off with an impromptu road trip from Calgary to Vancouver on Canada Day. What a spectacular drive! Okay, so I slept through the Rockies, but I saw them on the way back. Little Miss Cub had some kind of stomach ailment (Murphy’s Law of road trips) and puked on me during our breakfast stop. Something I learned about myself: after having kids, dropping trou in a Denny’s parking lot to change my pants does not faze me. I spent the rest of the trip squished between the two car seats in the back, ready to catch more puke. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Cub made the voyage like a champ: he slept a lot, since we left at the crack of dawn. Then he really just enjoyed the scenery and chatted with us. He never even asked: “Are we there yet?”
We spent the week at my parents’ house in South Surrey, and even got to have a play date with This West Coast Mommy and her daughters! (Our kids look like they could be cousins!)
Back in Calgary, my brother and his wife came to stay for a week and enjoy Stampede. It basically never rains in Calgary, and I’ve been trying to convince my brother that he should leave Vancouver for the way more affordable YYC Lifestyle. I had big plans to show him the amazing outdoor activities around the city. Of course, during the week of his visit, it rained and rained and rained and rained and rained some more.
Luckily, we chose the least rainy day to go to Stampede. Stampede is basically Calgary’s biggest party and the best excuse to wear tight-fitting jeans, plaid shirts, cowboy boots and hats for a whole week. It’s so big that “to stampede” is a verb here, and it doesn’t mean to run wild like cows … it means to partake in the festivities! There are free pancake breakfasts all over the city, and businesses are even more festively decorated than at Christmastime. After our day stampeding, Cub was so exhausted that my brother got to rock our Toddler Tula.
The two most exciting things to arrive at our house this month were Super Nintendo and a pregnant cat. We dug up Super Nintendo in my parents’ basement and brought it back from BC, and our pregnant cat is our newest foster from Meow Foundation. The two are not mutually exclusive since the cat has been named Zelda. [If you follow my social media, you know the kittens have since been born!]
My Mom came out at the end of the month to be here for her granddaughter’s birthday. I remember when she watched Cub blow out his candles over FaceTime, and she was so sad that she couldn’t be there in person. Now that we are such a short flight away, she was definitely going to see Little Miss eat her cake! We went to the Calgary Zoo on Little Miss’s birthday on a blog assignment (always good to mix business and parenting).
I made Little Miss a chocolate zucchini cake—her first time having chocolate! The cake turned out pretty well, although my experienced sweet tooth would’ve liked it even sweeter. Alas, this little baby doesn’t know (yet) what she’s missing. Naturally, her brother took care of the candle.
Cub has had an aversion to swimming pools for a couple of years, and I’m happy to report that this is the summer of “swimming.” And by swimming, I mean fully submerging his body. Hey, it’s a start! My Mom finally convinced him to put his entire body into the water, and this is big progress for us. Hopefully he’ll be willing to do swimming lessons in the fall. As you can see, the miserable weather we had during my brother’s visit was replaced by ridiculously sunny and hot weather when my Mom arrived. (Although there were thunderstorms almost every evening.)
My Mom made Little Miss this adorable fox dress for her first birthday. On my end, I had loyal reader Taylor create this sweet first birthday keepsake image for Little Miss. You can get one for your cubs’ milestones at her Etsy shop, Tay Mar Bow!
Did your baby celebrate a birthday recently?


Leave a Reply