Owen's Cake Smash!

Owen is ONE! It's still hard to believe that I'm a mom, but a mom to a 1-year old?! It's mind-boggling! Not sure where the past twelve months have gone, but it was the most tiresome, most stressful, yet the happiest, most rewarding, and best year ever.

I have always wanted Owen to have a cake smash, but we decided to not do it during his actual birthday party for several reasons, the biggest reason being that he gets overwhelmed very easily; so you can only imagine what his demeanor would have been like if he was surrounded by dozens of people yelling, "Smash the cake, Owen!" Complete and utter disaster.

So we did his cake smash a couple of weeks ago at my mom and dad's. And who was there to capture Owen's precious moments? Christina Cho! Duh!

Yes, I made it...not the prettiest cake, but I was proud of it!

Outfit from juDanzy. Hat from Party City.

Pooh Bear got dirty too.

All clean!

FAMILY!

With our favorite photographer!

As you can tell from the photos, Owen wasn't entirely thrilled in the beginning, but he eventually warmed up and was smiley towards the end of the session. Here are some tips for a stress-free and happy cake smash session:

1. Don't schedule the cake smash during nap time! Owen typically naps from 10am to noon, so we had his session at 1pm.
2. Do the session in a familiar place with familiar people.
3. In the days leading up to the session, give your child messy foods to feed himself...and maybe throw in a sweet treat here and there. Giving a spoon-fed child (who hasn't been given a lot of sweets) a whole cake to smash and eat would only end in lots and lots of tears...and quite possibly lots and lots of poop.
4. During the session, have his favorite toy on standby; in Owen's case, it was Pooh Bear. Owen also loved the balloons, so we threw some balloons in the air to get him smiling/laughing.
5. Take breaks. If your child starts to cry, do not press on by shoving his hand in the cake. He won't like it. Not one bit.
6. Be happy, and have fun! If you look or sound upset, your child can pick up on your feelings and react to them.

We just got back from San Diego last night, where we spent the last three days visiting the animal parks. I'll blog more about that later because we got one more park to go to for this kid's birthday. Can you guess what park that is?

And no, I did not forget about Owen's monthly photo. It's going to have to wait because he's simply not in the mood to stay still right now - it's his birthday, and he's in the mood to PAAAARTTTTTAAAY!