it was the standard 1st birthday party. the kid is totally overwhelmed and flabbergasted. the family is snapping away with their cameras. parent coaxes kid to rip open packages. kid wants to play with boxes that expensive toys came in rather than with expensive toys themselves. kid is then stripped down to nothing but a diaper and placed in front of messy confection and allowed to go wild. family snaps more photos. kid passes out and naps for four hours.

it was great fun. and little magnolia is no longer a baby, i guess. she's not yet a "little girl"; she's in that amorphous "toddler" phase. toddler phase involves learning to throw really world class fits and eating nothing but cheerios.

and speaking of throwing fits, we have a really weird problem with Hokey Pokey Elmo. we knew mag wanted that toy really bad; every time we walked by him at wal-mart, she would reach out and try to grab him and just babble and whine when we walked away. we had her open him last so she wouldn't freak out and stick on that one gift and not be able to continue with the rest of the haul. turned out to be a very smart move, bc HPE seems to make her insane. i can't figure out what it is. she clearly wants to play with it, but she picks it up and just starts screaming in frustration, anger, i don't know what. you press his hand to make him sing his little song and do his little dance, thinking that she's pissed bc she doesn't know how to turn it on, but then she just continues to scream! she'll throw him down, scream, pick him up, scream, run away from him screaming and run toward him screaming. she just can't handle it. i can't figure out what the hell is wrong. it seems that her emotion toward HPE is so strong that she just can't express it. and i can't handle all the screaming. so i think HPE is going underground for a few weeks. he'll be hanging out in the linen closet for now.