Our baby girl turned two this last week. It is amazing to watch her grow and to celebrate this milestone. Hot Hubby (HH) and I think she is incredibly gifted and beyond her mere two years (but we are a bit biased). She has really come into her own and started expressing her personality. She has likes and dislikes, her own agenda, and opinions about the things that go on around her. We try to embrace all of these things (even if that means not getting upset at shouts of "no" and "mine") and appreciate her for the little person she is. That does not mean that she has never been sent to time-out or been reprimanded for her actions, but it does make coping with toddler-hood easier. Anyway - I digress, after all this post is about Sweet Pea's birthday.
We rang in the big 2 in style with lots of buddies from the neighborhood, coloring, bubbles, slides, music, dancing, and CAKE. There were five toddlers and four babies with all of their parents in the house for the first half of the party due to a thunderstorm and I have never been so thankful for tile floors and a stain resistant couch.
The cupcakes were, of course, a huge hit. Prior to serving them Sweet Pea and her buddy Julia were caught climbing the drawers in the kitchen to reach the counter were the cupcakes sat. Have I ever mentioned that Sweet Pea is part monkey?
After we sang and served the cake, all of the parents watched many unassisted toddlers devour them. In a brief moment of distraction Sweet Pea snagged another cupcake so she was ready to PAR-TAY. HH said that when he swept the floor that evening there was enough for two entire cupcakes on the floor. There was also icing on every surface of the chairs and tables.
After cake it was time for presents. I let her open one from Katie that morning and after that she kept saying "more pe-sants mama" until we opened the rest of them. HH and I gave her a Stridor bike and she has been riding every day since. As soon as we get outside for a walk she says "wide a bike".
After cake and presents there was COMPLETE CHAOS. The rain stopped and the sun came out so everyone headed to the backyard. The kids, buzzed on sugar, ran all around, played with bubbles, slid on the slide, climbed on the slide, jumped off the top of the slide, and jumped off of all the chairs, and jumped off of the deck.....there was a lot of jumping off of things.
We did manage to get all of the kids to sit still long enough to eat some hot dogs and hamburgers and then they were on the move again. After everything wound down we and a few of the other families went for a walk around the neighborhood and Sweet Pea got to try out her new bike. She took right to it instantly.
It was an incredible day. Sweet Pea fell asleep that night before her third book was even read and slept until 9am the next morning. Love Bug (LB) also slept really well after all of the stimulus of being surrounded by sugar-crazed toddlers. He was blissfully unaware of what was going on, but he stayed awake the entire time and watched everything in amazement.
We experienced another milestone this last week as I went back to work. It was incredibly difficult to leave HH and my babies after having three wonderful months to be a stay at home mom. Fortunately, I have a career that I love and the first nights back went well for me. Unfortunately, LB hates to take a bottle and things did not go so well for Hubby. We started working with LB with bottles for the 10 days before I went back to work and thought that he would do ok, but we were wrong. He cried and cried and absolutely refused to drink from a bottle. At 9pm HH called at work to fill me in on the situation. That phone call was devastating and what was worse was that it was near impossible for me to leave right then. Knowing that I would not be able to get home for two or three hours (I commute an hour each way to work and would have had to wait for a replacement before I left) I started making phone calls. Two amazing women from our little close-knit community came to the rescue and together with Hubby they were able to get LB to drink a few ounces of milk and get him settled into bed. Not having family close by is difficult, but it is a saving grace to have such great friends to help. After all it takes a village to raise a child.
No comments:
Post a Comment