Happy Birthday To Bagel

Bagel turned 1 year old on Monday. I would have blogged about it then, but I've been so busy getting ready for the Virtual Tour, where they take pictures of every room in our house as an online selling tool, which means that every room in the house has to be clean at the same time, a virtually impossible task with three kids living in the house.

We scheduled his party for last night because the Virtual Tour was supposed to be yesterday. We figured the whole house would be clean, and we'd be able to party with as much abandon as you can with a one-year-old. Unfortunately, the realtor forgot to let the photographer know it was supposed to be yesterday, so he's coming today. I am really cheesed about that. I had carefully choreographed the cleaning so that everything would simultaneously be clean-- there are some rooms, like the kitchen, that are only perfectly clean at certain points in their use cycle-- and this completely threw it off. Now the laundry bins are starting to be overfull because the laundry cycle usually takes me a couple of days to get everything washed and folded, and I couldn't start a new laundry cycle until after the V.T. because it would leave bins of clean laundry lying around. The kitchen floor was freshly washed yesterday, but today it'll be day-old, which makes a big difference when you have a baby and white linoleum (for the record, the white linoleum was not my pick and if I'd ever had money, I'd have gotten something more cleanable). If I have time this morning, I suppose I could wash the kitchen floor again, but I doubt I'll have time because I have to go to work. And worst of all, the kitchen will now be cluttered by leftover cake and such. The fridge is already full and there's nowhere in the house that I can stow things.

Anyway, Bagel's birthday party went well. I didn't have time to cook so we just bought everything. We served rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, a veggie tray, and cheese and crackers. The cake was tasty, but the frosting got all over everything and wouldn't come off. We fed Bagel his cake over a plastic dropcloth, but that didn't stop him from pulling himself to stand up at my shoulder, encrusting me with cake and frosting. We gave him a bath and he got more cake and frosting on the bath mat, which means I have to wash and dry the bath mat after FH's shower but before I leave for work (the V.T. will be happening while I'm at work).

FH didn't have such a good time, though. After the party he lost everything he had eaten in a dramatic barf-fest brought on by his constant coughing. I really wish he'd quit insisting that coughing till you puke for months after every cold is "just allergies," and go see a doctor.