Amber is 1 year old!

Well, we've done it! We've officially managed to keep our tiny human alive and well for an entire year! That definitely deserves a pat on the back and some (rather smushed up) cake.

What a year it's been. She may have been born in the middle of lockdown, but that hasn't stopped our baby girl from being outgoing, smiley, happy and chilled. She really is a very relaxed baby and I honestly have no idea how. I guess Matt and I are calm (ish) people... sometimes. More likely, I think we're just very, very lucky that being a lockdown baby hasn't held her back. She's really amazing at reading people's expressions through their eyes, so maybe lockdown has even helped her!

I love taking photos of our beautiful girl. She was born on a Thursday, so we have done a mini photo shoot, showing off her cute clothes and her mood of the day, every Thursday since she was born. Sometimes she's playing, sometimes she's grinning from ear to ear, or laughing, and we even had those 3 weeks where she looked so miserable and tired because of a vomiting bug. We still took a photo every Thursday, to document her first year, with its highs and lows.

Our last photoshoot of Amber's first year was her birthday cake smash!

Honestly, hats off to anyone who does newborn photoshoots as their main job. I really enjoyed dabbling in a bit of baby photography at Christmas with the Jiggy Wrigglers sessions (see December 2021's blog post), but you add a cake into the mix and things become truly chaotic.

It took 4 of us to get these photos and we were all absolutely exhausted afterwards! We did have fun though. And so did Amber... even if she wouldn't eat any of the cake! She doesn't eat anything sweet really, and we didn't practice with a cupcake the week before like we were supposed to (according to the numerous blogs I read). I tried putting some icing on her tongue and she spat it out! Haha! Not that I'm complaining. I don't mind having a baby who prefers carrot sticks to cake!

She is a baby who loves textures though, so she very much enjoyed smushing up the cake in her hands and then clapping so that it went everywhere. So we got the benefit of messy cake photos without the whole sugar-rush-won't-sleep-for-days baby afterwards. Win win, I'd say!

Once thing is for sure though... no more cake smashes!