Sunday, February 10, 2013

Party Day

I. Am. Tired.

Yesterday was full of fun for my sweet C's fifth birthday. I hit the ground running Friday when I got home from school, making 24 cupcakes for her friend party and an Angry Birds cake for her family party.

Then came yesterday. We got up early and headed to Run, Jump, and Play for C's birthday party with friends. There about 15 kids there, mostly from preschool. They had a blast on all of the inflatables.

I have to say, I was pretty proud of C for her patience and thankfulness when opening presents. She took the time to admire each gift and thank each kid, without any prompting from us.
 Run, Jump, and Play was awesome! The staff set everything we brought up in her party room, kept the kids moving from room to room, kept a list of all of her gifts so we can write thank-you's this week, and cleaned everything up. So worth the money we spent.

Last night was C's family party. We had about 20 people crammed into our small house to celebrate our sweet girl. We made a ton of pasta, a huge salad, several loaves of garlic bread, and capped it off with cake and ice cream. The Angry Birds toppers on her cake are part of this game, which I'm sure we'll be playing a lot of in the coming weeks.
And now the celebrating is over. Today's plans include cleaning up, hanging up all of her new clothes, re-organizing her art supplies (she got a ton of art stuff from both friends and family and can't wait to get around to the business of creating), and relaxing.

Tomorrow is her 5 year well-check. I'm anxious to see how much she's grown in a year.

Happy Birthday, Sweet C! Until next year...

~One Ordinary Mom :-)

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

High Five

There's a saying that goes, "days and weeks are long, but months and years are short." Whoever said it wasn't kidding. I feel like we've gone from this...

...to this in about 5 seconds. Not 5 years.
My sweet C turned 5 today.
 I took a half day off work to spend the morning with my girl. I always said I would take some part of my work day off on their birthdays to spend time with my kids on their special days. B's birthday falls so close to Christmas that it's usually while I'm on break. C's 4th birthday was on a Sunday and her 3rd while I was on maternity leave with B, so I haven't taken a day off for her birthday since she turned 2.

Her gifts included the traditional new outfit (so you look awesome on your day), a Mario and Luigi shirt (she loves Mario; I'm not even sure why), a puzzle, some story cards, a Leappad, and the Brave game for her Leappad.
 We sent her on a treasure hunt around the house for her clues. C has quite a few sight words and is great at sounding things out. She needed some help with the clues, but recognized enough words in each clue that she knew where she needed to go to find her next present.
 She calls her Leappad her "iPad." And other than when she was at school and when she took a nap (One Ordinary Dad has gotten her back on a napping schedule-- she takes a 20-30 minute power nap almost daily-- he is a saint), she has done nothing but play Leappad.
 Her restaurant of choice for dinner was McDonald's. She loves the indoor playland at the one near our house. I bought some cupcakes for after dinner and we'll probably do her puzzle before bed and use her story cards to create a bedtime story. She wants to wear her Mario shirt to school tomorrow.

Saturday will be filled with parties. One with her friends in the morning at a local giant inflatable playland and one in the evening at our house with family. I make the kids' cakes for their birthdays and C has requested an Angry Birds cake. I ended up buying the tabletop Angry Birds game and plan to use the pieces from that to put on her cake. The game was only $1.50 more than the Angry Birds cake decorating set, and I know she'll play the game in the future.

It's going to be a busy week, but I'm glad I got to steal a few quiet moments with C this morning before school and I plan to steal a few more tonight.

Happy Birthday, Sweet C. I can't believe you are a whole-hand-full-of-fingers old today!

Love,
One Ordinary Mom :-)

PS: Sweet C could use your prayers for peace. We thought she was doing okay with the transition to a pet-free home. She hasn't brought it up much at home or really acted like she missed them. However, she acted out at school quite a bit last week and exploded yesterday when she didn't want to share, yelling that "everyone is taking things from her like her pets." Her teacher assured us this is normal processing for her age and circumstance, but it still breaks my heart. At school she has also been drawing our pets a lot and talking about them. We checked a helpful book out from the library (which a guidance counselor at my school suggested) and are working through it. I'm really hoping that the birthday celebrations and gifts are a nice distraction for now and that God will continue to heal her broken heart and give her peace about it. On the bright side, we have noticed a pretty significant decrease in her snoring (which was part of it, apparently). She used to saw logs and you could hear her from the hallway. Now, it's barely audible unless you're close to her.