By the time the older girls were two, they were already completely enamored with a cartoon character. Elise was a Sesame Street junkie, so it was a no-brainer that her second birthday party would have an Elmo theme. Nina was all about Dora the Explorer when she was two, so her planned and then postponed and then planned again and then canceled second birthday party would have been a Dora party. The nurses in the hospital where she was being treated were the beneficiaries of a lovely Dora cake.
As Addison's birthday rolled around, I was at a loss for a party theme. The child refuses to watch TV, and her favorite book is about a dratted caterpillar. I was not in the mood for a caterpillar party. She loves school buses though, so the school bus themed birthday party idea was born.
We had a school bus cake.
Entertainment was provided by a school bus pop-up tent.
She was sporting a tres chic personalized school bus t-shirt.
And Elise gave her a school bus toy.
This gift had nothing to do with school buses, but it is an awesome ride-on. The little caster wheels move in any direction, so you can do 360's on this bad boy.
Addie's favorite gift of the night came from Nina. Nina selected this jack-in-the-box about a month ago, adamant that Addie would love it. She was right. I had to pry it out of Addie's chubby little paws tonight, so she didn't take it to bed with her.
This party may have been lacking the usual Elmo, Pooh, Barney, or Dora paraphernalia, but I believe the school bus party was a huge success. Beep, Beep!
You turned two yesterday. TWO! How can you possibly be TWO? You will be my baby forever, but two just sounds so much more grown-up than the pre-two ages that are referenced by months. Now I'll be forced to count your age in years. That's tough on a mama. The difference between 22 months and 23 months seems trivial. The difference between 23 months and TWO seems monumental.
You are a spunky, independent, strong-willed little turkey. Of course, part of that just goes with the territory of being two. You are very good at being two. The stomping feet and full blown tantrums are all a part of your basic communication skills right now.
You've learned how to make yourself heard over the roar of your older sisters though. At the dinner table, you have discovered that saying "All Done." or pushing your plate away is often met with "Just a minute" or "I'll help you in a second" or absolutely no response at all. To solve that problem, you now stand up on your chair when you are done. As much as it drives me crazy, I have to admit, it is pretty clever. You instantly have someone rushing to your side to help you down from the table with that little trick.
Your verbal skills are coming along slowly but surely. Your sentences are rarely longer than two words - "More, please.", "Sissy hug.", "Daddy, sit.", or "Poops, potty.", but your language development is inching along. On the subject of potty training, we had absolutely no intention of potty training this early. I've always been of the belief that the earlier potty training is started, the longer it takes. I think you are going to force it on us though. You are asking to sit on it regularly now, and making a deposit at least half the time. You get furious if we try to put a diaper on you without letting you sit on the potty first. I suppose we'll tackle potty training after the holidays since you seem to be training yourself with or without us!
You had your first haircut last weekend. Your father had been threatening for months to take you to get it cut if I didn't, so I finally gave in. I know your curls won't last, so I didn't want anyone to touch them. You won't wear hair clips though, and I couldn't in good conscience let you go around with your hair in your eyes much longer.
Before picture:
During:
After:
You are still a daddy's girl. His injured knee has troubled you, so you point at it several times per day, declaring "Boo boo!" I'm sure he appreciates the reminder. In an attempt to fight the boredom that comes along with a knee injury, your dad has grown a goatee. You tell him "ouch!" when he kisses you. Good girl... mama has coached you well!
You are definitely a creature of habit. Maybe you get that from your grandfather who went to Starbuck's every day so consistently at 10 a.m. that you could set your watch by him. You go to bed every night at 6:30 and wake up promptly at 7:00. On the rare occassion when we keep you up past 6:30, it throws your entire schedule out of whack.
When you walk down the hall at daycare, you feel compelled to shut every open door, every time, every day... no matter how much of a hurry I might be in. It is like the world might cease to exist right that very moment if a door is left open. MUST SHUT DOORS... MUST SAVE THE WORLD. Your reading selections in the evening consist of two different books and one puzzle. Every. Night. If that caterpillar book that you love so dearly were ever to accidentally land in the fire place, I can't say that I would miss it.
Most of all, you are a sweet, fun, cute, funny little person learning to navigate your way in this big crazy world. Your hugs, kisses, and giggles make me smile even on my most challenging days.
Apparently J.C.'s leg was just the beginning in what is turning out to be a string of bad luck, or a hex. To the amateur Harry Potter out there practicing spells on my family, I'm asking kindly that you BACK OFF!
Yesterday afternoon, Nina was supposed to attend a birthday party at one of those bounce-till-you-get-kicked-in-the-head-and-have-a-concussion inflatable places. This particular one is open to the public during parties, so I took Elise and Addison with me to wear them out before bed. Actually, given that J.C.'s crutches render him utterly useless with the toddler, I didn't have much choice in the matter. I had to take the whole crew with me. Addie had delayed her afternoon nap by about 2 hours, so I had to wake a peacefully sleeping baby to go (it pains me to even type that). We were running our usual 10 minutes late, and when I arrived at the shopping center where said bounce house place is supposed to be, I couldn't find it. I had a coupon in my pocket to use for Elise and Addie's admissions, so I pulled out my trusty coupon and called the number. When the phone was answered, I couldn't hear what the woman said over the background noise of the kids bouncing, but I asked where they were located. Her answer was the name of a mall about five minutes down the road. That seemed like an odd location for an inflatable party place, but I asked where the best place to park was, and she said the food court. I never go to this particular mall. I can find Gymboree and P.F. Chang's, but that's about it. After getting stuck in traffic, then circling the parking lot several times looking for a spot, I finally parked near what I hoped was the food court. As luck (or the hex) would have it, we were at the opposite end of the mall. We checked the mall directory looking for the location of the inflatable place, but it wasn't listed. I thought perhaps it had just recently moved, so we hiked down to the other end of the mall near the food court in hopes of finding it. With no sign of it, I pulled out my trusty coupon, and once again called the number printed on the coupon. Over the roar of background noise, I again couldn't hear how she answered the phone, so I asked specifically if this was the number of the party place. She said, "This is T-Mobile at the mall."
Sigh.
What were the odds that of all the many inflatable party places we've been to, this party was at the one that I didn't know how to find? What were the odds that the one I don't know how to find has the WRONG phone number printed on their own coupons? What were the odds that the incorrect phone number belonged to an equally loud business establishment just down the road? Really? Am I on candid camera or something?
At this point, the party was half over. By the time we tracked all the way back through the mall to the car, got stuck in traffic again, and tried to find the inflatable place whose location was still unknown, we were likely to arrive just in time to say good-bye. I had to figure out a way to save face. I looked downstairs, saw Build-A-Bear, and asked Nina if she would be OK going to Build-A-Bear and just inviting the birthday party friend over for a playdate later in the week. She reluctantly agreed, so I was off the hook for finding the inflatable place but just put myself $50 in the hole for bears. It was worth the fifty bucks though not to continue on that hopeless crusade.
Upon leaving the mall, we were a van full of hungry people. Since we didn't have the bum-knee-no-Asian-food-eating family member with us, we decided to hit Pei Wei for dinner. We pulled up to find a line out the door. That would never do. Poor Addie was about to collapse from hunger, so last night got added to the growing list of fast food meals for the week. We pulled into Chick-Fil-A's drive-through, and I called J.C. to get his order. It included a milkshake, so I got a second for the girls to split. When we arrived home, I opened the car door, and the car interior light came on. That is when I discovered that an entire large oreo cookie milkshake had flipped out of the cupholder and spilled out all over the car. Nice.
Tonight, as I sat down to download some pictures from my camera to post on the blog, my camera is blinking "CF Err", and I'm unable to download any pictures using the card reader. That was like the cherry on top of that oreo milkshake rolling around on the floor of my car.
I'm serious about the hex thing. It has got to STOP.
Elise's big plans for a swimming party a couple weeks ago were derailed when she ended up in the hospital with ITP again. Although it would have been so simple to just reschedule the pool party, the weather is iffy enough this time of year that we just couldn't plan on that. Instead, we decided to try a "Not Quite a Slumber Party" - all the fun, games, and activities of a slumber party but without the staying up until the wee hours of the morning, spending the night, and dealing with overtired kids the next day. The plan was pizza, cake, crafts, and a movie and then sending everyone home at 9:00 in their pajamas to sleep in their own beds. It all sounded great in theory. In practice though, Holy High Maintenance Party! I've done my fair share of home parties - tea parties, princess parties, gingerbread decorating parties, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. Clearly, I was delusional.
First on the schedule was pizza. That should be easy, right? You call the nearby pizza franchise, order a bunch of pizzas, they arrive on your doorstep just as the girls arrive, and you have cute, happy kids eating pizza like this.
Except it didn't... arrive that is. The pizza that was supposed to be delivered promptly at 5:30 as all the guests were arriving didn't show up. As I walked around proclaiming, "The pizza will be here any minute" while cursing under my breath, my house looked like a scene out of a B-movie after some monster storms the house and all the crazed occupants are running wildly in every direction screaming hysterically. This video is a 15 second sample of what was an interminable 30 minute wait for pizza.
Next on the agenda was cake... nothing can go wrong there, right? I mean how could you run into problems with a butt-ugly (but hand-picked by the birthday girl) cake like this?
First, the ceiling fan blew out the candle. We recovered quickly from that one though. No sweat. That's the end of the cake problems, right?
No, that would be much too easy. As I cut into the Girl Scout Thin Mint Blizzard ice cream cake, I discovered there was no mint, no Thin Mint, and no blizzard. Nice. Except for the creepy lipgloss guitar and Elise's name on the top, it was not at all what I had ordered. Elise wasn't too upset, fortunately, but my bigger concern at this point was, "What IS in this cake if not Girl Scout Thin Mints?" With a peanut allergic child as a guest, I wasn't about to feed her any unidentified cake until I figured out what the heck I was serving. Could they have given us a Girl Scout Tagalong cake instead? J.C. and I were all, "DO NOT GIVE E ANY CAKE YET!!!!!", and I think we terrified the poor child. We finally determined that the cake was simply plain ol' boring peanut-allergy-friendly vanilla, but by the time we were completely confident on that fact, I think she was too freaked out to eat it. Poor girl.
After surviving the pizza and cake fiascos, I was ready to get on with the crafts that had now been delayed a half hour due to the ineptitude of the pizza place.
On the docket for crafts, the girls would be decorating pillows and making dream catchers. The crafts went reasonably well, but remember the above mentioned trouble causing ceiling fan? The dream catcher kits were filled with feathers, so as soon as the first few girls opened their kits, we heard a frantic, "TURN OFF THE FAN!!!! SOMEBODY TURN OFF THE FAN RIGHT NOW!!!" as feathers swirled around the screened porch. Lovely. That was fun to clean up.
Last stop of the night was the Hannah Montana movie. In my head, this was the easiest two hours of the party. The kids would all lie on sleeping bags, relaxing, quietly enjoying the movie while I sat back and put my feet up for a bit. Uh yeah... whatevs. Was I smoking crack when I dreamed up that image?
Granted there was a little bit of that, but there was a WHOLE LOT of "Can I please have some more popcorn?" (I think my microwave was popping popcorn non-stop for a full two hours. How they had room for that much popcorn after the pizza and cake, I'll never know.). There was also quite a bit of this.
Once the movie ended, Elise opened her presents and the girls went home with fresh baked cookies and a little carton of milk for a bedtime snack.
Overall, the party was a success. The girls had a great time, and there were no injuries, allergic reactions, cat fights, illnesses, broken lamps, or parent-of-the-birthday-girl mental breakdowns (narrowly missed that one). J.C. and I were exhausted though - beyond drained. We were spent. I will say that a "Not Quite a Slumber Party" has got to be a thousand times easier than an actual slumber party. That is not; however, to say that it is easy. Fun, yes. Easy and stress-free? Not so much. Elise loved every minute of it, so I am probably supposed to say that the smile on her face made it worth all the hard work. You know what though, she would have had a smile that big at the orginally scheduled pool party or at a "pay some party establishment to do absolutely everything" kind of party too. You can guess where we'll be next year.
Today was Nina's long awaited birthday party. She has been talking it up for months. The main requirement was that it had to be a boy/girl party so that she could invite the love of her life, A. She desperately wanted a party at a bounce house place, so that's what we did. I think fun was had by all, parents included!
I will apologize in advance for the quality of the pictures. An incorrect setting on the camera that I didn't discover until close to the end of the party resulted in really awful photos. Here are the few I could salvage.
Air Hockey
The Obstacle Course
Boxing
The slide
The Wii
Parents of the Birthday Girl!
The kids
The cake... pink, of course!
The presents
And one last group shot. Nina will love this picture with A showing off his muscles! Of course, I hadn't noticed this while I was taking the picture, but it appears Nina has her own little admirer there next to her... A2!
Nina's birthday is later this week, but we let her open one gift today. Weekdays don't allow much time for outdoor play this time of year with the short daylight hours and cold temperatures, so we let her open this present early... a stomp rocket. We took it out this afternoon and all had a blast! (Pun intended)
J.C.: <mumbling in a still half-asleep state> "Happpy <unintelligible mumbles> Birthday!"
Ann: "What?"
J.C.: "Happy Not Your Birthday!"
Ann: "Huh?"
J.C.: "Isn't today the 24th?"
Ann: "Uhhh.... no... it's the 25th."
J.C.: "Oh #$*&%@!!! Oh, well then... Happy Birthday! Can we do your presents tonight instead of this morning? Today was the day the girls and I were going to go shopping for your birthday tomorrow."
Ann: "Sure... that's fine, moron."
Oh well, this is a big improvement over two years ago when he forgot my birthday COMPLETELY! At least this year he was only a day off... just gotta look at it with the right perspective. Everything is relative, right?
We celebrated Addie's first birthday yesterday with cupcakes and family... can't think of a better way to honor a first birthday!
Addie was pretty apprehensive about the cupcakes at first...
She got over that though!
One of her favorite gifts was a baby doll from Jo Jo.
The doll got some sweet kisses from Addie with Grandmamma.
The girls' only cousins were able to come to the party! Yea!
By far though, the highlight of the birthday has been Addie's new wagon. She is driving this thing all over the house. She walks until she runs into a wall, then whines and looks to the closest person to reset her in a new direction. Walk, whine, reset, repeat!
Today you turned one. Although you maintained the activity level of a meatloaf for 11 months, you are definitely moving now. Your funny, awkward, endearing bum scootch is getting faster, and in just the past week, you've started to crawl short distances. You are even pulling up to standing and beginning to cruise. The inquisitive toddler in you is beginning to emerge as you explore the house with your new found mobility. Last night as I was running your bath, you threw both your shoes in the toilet. Awesome. Thanks. Last week, I caught you just as you were inserting a small metal object into an electrical outlet (Yes, all outlets were babyproofed immediately following that incident). The most astonishing thing about that was the identification of the small metal object. You had somehow managed to unscrew the screw that holds the outlet cover to the wall and that's what you were using to try to fry yourself! I think you may be following in Nina's footsteps as a little junior engineer.
Your daycare teacher described you well one day recently. After watching Nina pick you up (all 28 pounds of you) and drag you awkwardly around the room, she said, "Addison, it is a good thing you're a big baby. I'd be worried about you if you were a little delicate thing." I think that is true for you both physically and emotionally. You are not a "little delicate thing" by any stretch of the imagination. You are a tough cookie both inside and out. You are not easily frazzled and usually roll with whatever the day holds for you. I think you got your father's disposition. You are pretty self sufficient when it comes to eating or taking a bottle. I think that comes with the territory of being a third child though. If you had to wait for mom or dad any time you were hungry, you might just starve.
Tonight we had a small birthday dinner for you at Carrabba's. Your dad and I decided that you will have many years to torture us with birthday dinners at McDonald's and Chuck E. Cheese, so since we got to choose this year, we chose one of our favorites. We ordered you a small serving of whipped cream for dessert, and I don't think you liked it nearly as much as your party hat.
This first year has gone by lightning fast, and I can hardly believe it is over. Although a big part of me doesn't want it to come to an end, I also know I'm blessed to have had a healthy baby who is growing up and developing as she should. You add a touch of sweetness to a house often filled with drama and chaos. Of course, you will add your own level of chaos in the coming year as you get more and more mobile and start exploring your world. Age twelve to twenty-four months is always a wild ride, but I know it will be fun. I can't wait to see your interpretation of what it means to be a toddler.
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