First Birthday Expectations

Last weekend was Max’s first birthday. We had a small get together with my parents and sister’s family. I wanted a memorable picture of Max to mark his first birthday. I envisioned him in an adorable outfit, smiling at the camera and smashing his hands into a cake (that I baked). But that’s not exactly what happened.

Initially I wasn’t planning to have a smash cake. It was only after perusing Pinterest that I was inspired to bake and decorate one myself. The icing was much harder to do than I expected so the cake wasn’t beautiful, but I was still proud of it.

The goal was to have Max sit in a staged area decorated with festive tassels and balloons, sit in front of the cake and nicely post for a memorable picture. Of course, by the time he was fed, dressed and changed, Max was too riled up to sit in one place. Additionally, he was so fascinated by the balloons and decorations that he totally ignored the camera. When I removed the balloons to help him focus on the cake he became grumpy and couldn’t have cared less about his birthday dessert.

Feeling defeated, I starting packing up the tripod and camera. I was giving up on the hope that we’d have a winning picture to commemorate Max’s first birthday. Then I turned around to see Max, blue faced from the icing and smiling happily, and realized he was having a great time. We ended up having a fantastic day and the photographs we did get are priceless. Here are a few of my favorites.

Since Max never actually smashed his cake, we saved it for the following day when we Skyped with Aaron’s parents. This time, we laid out a sheet and just let Max go for it—no staging, no expectations. He approached the cake cautiously, but soon had his entire hand covered with blue frosting. The whole experience was so much fun to watch, although incredibly messy! We did our best to make sure Max didn’t eat TOO much cake, but probably failed on that front! Max still has a few more gifts that we will give him over the next few days, but all in all he had an awesome birthday!