Hi everyone on HIVE and especially the Weekend Experiences Community. I am still quite new to HIVE. Mostly I’ve been posting about my music that I write and perform with fellow HIVER 
Recently my friend 
So, what did I get up to this weekend?
Well! Let’s start on 30 July 2021, when my life changed forever as my darling wife and I welcomed little Madison, our first baby daughter, into the world! Now raising a baby is never easy, but my wife Julia and I have been blessed on two counts:
•Little Madison (or Maddy) has a very sweet, chilled, giggling temperament as far as babies go, and for the most part has only cried for a good reason like hunger, tiredness, teething, etc… She was quite good at sleeping in her own room from a young age and only waking up to feed once or twice a night as well…
•The other blessing is how supportive our friends and family have been! We have aunties, grandparents and great-aunties who love to visit and help. We have 3 godmothers who love to visit and help. We were afraid that our friends would get bored of us and stop visiting, but they have stayed true and all seem genuinely enchanted by our little baba.
So, when it was time to organize her first Birthday Party this Saturday 30 July 2022, we realized that about 50-60 people would want to be there, and that it would be a serious celebration! Here in South Africa, we are still getting used to being able to have proper parties like this, after years of covid-19 restrictions having finally been relaxed significantly quite recently. This made the event even happier!
The birthday girl had a lot of fun and received a lot of love and cuddles - in the bottom middle picture she's having a little snooze after all the exhausting fun!
More highlights - in the bottom middle picture she is looking a bit perplexed at everyone singing Happy Birthday for her!
The beautiful cake that Julia made! - several other friends are also talented bakers and brought cakes and treats...
I put up a screen showing a looping slideshow of pictures from all 52 weeks of little Madison's life so far... here's the first slide showing that she was born with a good head of dark hair...
And here's the last slide! Her hair has grown blonder over the year and the first teeth have arrived!
I'm interested and eager to see if Maddy enjoys either of my two main hobbies... (probably too eager and I should calm down a bit!) Here's her grandpa pushing her across the pool (towards my waiting hands) on a soft surfboard when she was barely 6 months old! I remember her quite enjoying this with a big smile on her face!
As she has approached her first birthday I have noticed a distinct preference for musical toys. She has been blowing on penny-whistles, shaking rattles, drumming on things, she seemed to understand how pressing a piano keyboard made noises, and she's been reaching over to strum my guitar when I play it - well that's very exciting for me! How about a little ukelele as a birthday present? I will leave it for her in an open tuning, that will sound nice when strummed even without a second hand holding a chord (just yet)...
Well it was a lovely day, and I honestly think my wife Julia should consider a career in party-planning! She really made it a special day for our darling little girl! The beer and bubbles flowed for the adults, and we stuffed our faces with cake and candy-floss and I actually got a belly-ache! The babies and children all got little party-packs to take home as well! Now it's Sunday night and we're all partied out!
I think our own birthdays are going to be low-key affairs after this! I think we can only plan one party like that one per year! Haha!
THE END
