Thanks to Zerorez for providing their complimentary services. As always, all opinions in the post are my own.
“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.”
Our little Aarush, who is apparently not so little anymore, turned ONE!
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.”
Our little Aarush, who is apparently not so little anymore, turned ONE!
From cake smashing to birthday outing to partying with family and friends, it has been one long celebration…
That smile… melts my heart, every.single.time! And he is mostly all smiles, all.the.time, even when sick 😮
The party is yet to begin and some decorations have already gone missing, scroll down to see how? 😮
But tell me something? Didn’t Vinay and I just bring this tiny-little-handsome home from the hospital? Weren’t we just trying to figure out how to…hold him right, feed him, burp him, change him, swaddle him, rock him, put him to sleep (while battling our own), and put up a fight with him when he refused to do any or all of it? While this little monkey is way too smart for his parents and while we are still trying to master some of these parenting skills (even after a whole entire year) he seems to have not only mastered several skills but also uses them to trick his parents a.k.a us, with his many talents often (by often, I mean, only a few dozen times a day).
It’s like we blinked and a year just flew by, at rocket speed… now we have a one-year-old, a waddler!
Happy one to you, our baby boy, our little angel!
That paparazzi moment!
While we celebrated all things Aarush, we also celebrated one year of this beautiful, magical, incredible journey of parenthood… and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this journey is also just as stressful, exhausting and difficult at times, but it is all so well worth it, for the priceless smiles and countless giggles.
So we most importantly celebrated surviving a year of being parents…
Happy one year of parenthood to us!
Aarush: can you two stop squishing me and gimme more cake already! #grumpyface
And in all honesty, the first birthday celebration isn’t really for the baby, but it is for the parents, it is for the grandparents, it is for the uncles and aunts, and it is for the village which is responsible for this happy and healthy growing ball of joy… so as always we tried to celebrate this BIG MILESTONE in style!
Being the crazy-obsessive-person that I already am, who goes all out when it comes to celebrations, planning every single detail and making everything with my own hands, I obviously had to make my baby’s first birthday as special as I could… and after having to reschedule his birthday party a few times, thanks to the daycare germ storm, and with the limited amount of time on hands (less than 2 days) I did the best I could in terms of setting up and getting everything going (not to forget with a one-year-old in tow). Though I do regret not being able to execute at least another 50-60% of the ideas which I had for his birthday party, but I was so so sooo glad that he did not fall sick yet again a day or 2 before the party.
Final touches before the party…
And when it comes to hosting a party, the biggest concern rather a time hog is cleaning your house and keeping it spick and span, especially when you have a waddler at home who loves to throw his food and drinks on the floor rather than put it in his mouth… So a huge thanks to Zerorez for taking the pressure off of me when it came time to tidying up the carpet/hardwood floors and get them ready just in time for the birthday party! They were so amazing to get me on their schedule on a really short notice, and even came back another day after the party to take care of areas (including bathroom tiles, shower, and mattresses) which we didn’t have the time to get to before the party. The entire house was absolutely spotless after they worked their magic, like move-in day spotless, and that too without using any harsh chemicals or soaps, which makes it completely safe for the kids (which BTW is a huge plus for me)!
I highly, highly recommend Zerorez and their services to anyone looking to get their house all clean and sparkly.
Carpet floor as good as new, thanks to Zerorez! Pic doesn’t do justice.
Meanwhile, Aarush: I pulled out 2 more lanterns, now just gotta run before mom notices it.
Ok, she’s right there, let me run this way instead.
Oopsie, she saw me with the lanterns!
More tassels pulled out and thrown on the floor.
Meanwhile, Aarush: Mom, I am pretty sure you are telling me something I don’t want to hear so lemme just cover my ears 😉
Once the cleaning part was taken care of, I could easily go about DIY’ing, setting up the place and getting everything ready for the birthday party.
I opted for the Peek-A-Boo theme as it is Aarush’s absolute favorite game and also because he loves his Peek-A-Boo elephant toy the most, read more about it here. It is a theme not so common or usual for birthday parties and hence a bit tricky to find decor items, especially when you are short of time. And as far as the color scheme goes, I loathe the stereotyping of colors for girls and boys, but I didn’t have much of a choice because there’s only all things pink or all things blue available at stores. So I went with blue but mixed in a lot of yellows, whites, some greens and golds to keep it kind of neutral.
These photo props cracked everyone up!
Peek-A-Boo Guess Who Wall – Aarush’s monthly birthday celebration pics and his favorite things to do aka his super skills displayed
While plenty of streamers, pom poms, tassels, lanterns, balloons, printed photos, his unique skills written out on cards, photo props, favor bags, and home decor items (including the bar cart and blackboard) created a kids birthday party vibe, lots of elephant-related elements made up the rest of the decorations, including the birthday cake and brought the Peek-A-Boo theme alive. And no, I did NOT make the cake, I so wish I had enough time to make the cake myself though.
Peek-A-Boo Elephant Cake, it might not look inviting but tasted super delish!
And for the rest of the details, they are all in the pictures. But too bad that between all the running around, neither Vinay nor I had enough time to snap photos of the decorations beforehand and looks like we don’t even have pics of some of the set-up, sigh (note to self: assign an expert to take photos of every.damn.detail next time around, smh!). Forget photos, I didn’t even remember to let my hair open (cuz it’s mostly tied up since Aarush learned to keep pulling at my hair) #momlife haha.
Look who’s eager to cut the cake
Yep, We Survived! Notice the prop in my hand?
All heart eyes for this pic, my babies!
Hope you enjoyed a sneak-peek into our baby boy’s big ONE! Stay tuned for ‘A Year In Review’ along with some fun cake smash pics coming to the blog soon’…
…here’s to many, many more to you our little darling, and to us!!!
“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.”
“Your first breath took ours away.”
xoxo,
Kusum
xoxo,
Kusum
Leave a Reply