One: oh, the places you'll go!

As much as I was willing time to stop, it didn't obliged.  My girl turned one.

As much as I bitterly greeted this day as her mother, I am also proudly celebrating this great milestone, just as I have many milestones before in her first short year of life. 

The concept for Lia's birthday party began as a rough scratch in my head around the time she was six months old.  I knew I wanted pinwheels, lots of it.  More importantly, I wanted something that we can look back to years from now and we would be brought back to a place in time, a certain nostalgia, appropriate for the time that it represents.  It is true that at a young age of one, she would never be able to comprehend it beyond the pictures that she will eventually see, but it doesn't mean that I will ever forget.

I will always remember how fast this time had flown by.  The work it takes to get here is now a blur, but the memories is forever sketched into my head and my heart.  As I blindingly but joyfully try to figure out my role as a parent, I am also acutely aware of the greater struggle of raising her, of allowing her to be her own person, of developing and molding her into a good person I know she will be. 

We often love to read at night as part of our nightly bedtime routine, I came across a Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places You'll Go! and it occurred to me that it would a perfect representation of the first year.  So, a theme was developed and all that was left was a lot of late night work to bring the concept to life.
We celebrate birthdays big in our family.  It is the one day of the year that is truly our own, to dwell in the attention that is lavished onto us.  As much as I would like to say that I am doing it all for her, all the work it took to put together her party was admittedly all for me.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love a great party, one that is thrown not in a lavishly expensive sense but in a full-of-heart sense, because I am one of those who put together a party with my whole heart, finding a meaningful theme and creating through concept and execution details that speaks beyond the paper and glue, fabrics and thread.

This is my passion.  Through the years, I finally understood it.  So I cultivated and embraced it, because it makes me happiest when I am making, with my two hands.  Despite how much more expensive it is to make, as opposed to buy, there is no monetary unit to measure a creative outlet that exponentially results in more passion to other parts of my life, as a parent, as a career woman, as a wife.

The one thing that I want my girl to know and understand is my passion point, and that I derived a lot of happiness from it, but it is all very insignificant compared to my love for her, because it is in the commonplace moments of being her mother that I feel like I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Until next year...