You've come a Long way, baby

Everyone says a baby's first birthday is really for the mom, not for the baby - and I can see why.

Larkin is turning 1 next month, and I've been planning her birthday party since February.

That's right, for 5 and a half months I have been obsessed with planning the perfect first birthday celebration that Larkin will never remember.

The first couple of planning decisions were easy. The theme is going to be polka dots and we are going to serve cupcakes. Done and done.

I started making handmade birthday invites that are pretty darn cute. And that's as far as I got for a while, mainly because I got hung up on the guest list.

Here is where I have made myself extra crazy. I've made list after list of our family, Larkin's friends, my friends, Matt's friends...and then I counted and there were 47 people on the guest list.

It took some time for me to come to terms with the fact that 47 people is too many.

While I really want all our friends and family to celebrate Larkin turning 1, I know that I need to keep the group small enough that she won't feel overwhelmed and can actually enjoy herself.

So we're going to keep her first birthday party to just family - because we're lucky enough to have lots of family close by who can get to Austin easily and because that gives us a manageable number to work with.

Then next year when Larkin's birthday party might actually be all about her instead of all about me, we'll do something different.