My parents always made birthdays so special for me growing up! They don’t like their own birthdays much, but they always made me feel so special and loved on my day! Now that we are parents, my husband and I are beyond pumped to share this joy and celebration of a birthday with our baby girl! I don’t put her up on the blog a lot as because as a new mom, I like to respect her privacy. But a birthday is something a proud momma has to share!
She just turned 1 a week ago today and I was not about to work that day so it was just me and my baby girl all day, playing! I had to do one fun outing just baby girl and momma but it is #1 winter, so brrr not much to do outside & #2 she is little, so not a ton of outing options make sense. But I was determined to think of something special. I work at Scholastic Book Fairs and our main motto is Access and Choice – give the kids an access point to get a book and then let kids choose their own books – then they will want to read more! Autumn has always loved us reading to her but recently she loves loves loves books and takes a liking to particular ones. In the past few weeks she has been really choosing certain ones to read and not trying to chew on them as much! Haha
So it sparked an idea…take her to a local book store and walk around with her seeing what she likes on the shelves and then reading a pile of books to her…see which one she is drawn to the most or wants me to read over and over. Our adventure began once we arrived…
I love book stores so so much and I felt like this was the perfect fun outing! Well, she was a little tired so it didn’t go quite as I pictured it in my head but isn’t that mom life all the time!
She did love exploring the shelves – recently she learned to walk and that second shelf up was just her height. And of course one of the first books she picks from the shelf…Boss Baby! So she thinks! Too funny!
Daddy was able to surprise her at the store on the way home from work and we did have a really fun time looking at the books, reading to her, and choosing a favorite!
This picture of her and I…it’s very deceiving as not 2 seconds after it was snapped she vigorously squirmed away from my lap like a crazy baby on the loose! All the lil kids around in the kid section were so distracting to her.
Duck and Goose Let’s Dance was the winner! Surprise surprise – same author/illustrator as her same book at home and she loves to dance. I feel like she knows herself so well at 1!
I wasn’t going to do a post about this initially since it isn’t a huge groundbreaking idea – but sometimes it is the simple ideas as a parent that make the most impact on our kids…or so we can hope! We’ve decided that we will do this Birthday Book Tradition with her each year now. It will be our tradition on her birthday to go to a local book store and let her look and pick out one book that she has chosen all by herself – of appropriate content of course!
It isn’t to say she will never get any other book during the year, but this will be her birthday book and when she turns 18 we can show her all her choices. Maybe there will be a trend or maybe it will represent how she has changed over the years with her interests. No matter how it turns out…I can’t wait to have these moments with her and my husband! I love being a momma! So many opportunities to impact their lives for the better – I do fail a lot of time so don’t think I think it is all perfection but we can’t look at those moments and harp on them as a parent. Find the positive moments and repeat those!
Stay tuned for her big Birthday Party post next week – so much fun to share!