Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category
My sweet girl is three years old and I have no idea where the last year went. All I know is that my baby is rapidly disappearing and a little girl is taking her place. She’s a lovely little girl, for sure, but I’m already missing that baby potbelly and those pinch-able cheeks and trying to figure out where all these arms (with the pointiest elbows known to mankind) and legs came from all of a sudden.
Two was a great year. I waited and waited for those terrible twos I’d heard so much about to show up but they never did. Ava is an easygoing child who is mostly compliant (although she can have her moments) and content as long as she’s included in what we’re doing. She’s a bit of a shy girl who takes some time to warm up to new people and activities and is still happiest in Mama or Daddy’s arms until she’s scoped out the scene.
She’s turning out to be a reader. She will sit for ages and ‘read’ us book after book after book. Some of these she’s memorized from many, many nights of reading the same ones (Pajama Time, Bear Snores On) overandoverandover and others she’ll just make up her own story from the pictures. She also reads to her toys, the dogs, the cats, and anyone/thing who will listen to her. And a TV watcher she is not (just like her mama). 15 minutes of Sesame Street to see the Elmo’s World segment is all she’s interested in.
She loves lambs (yams). My mom gave her one for Christmas and he’s become the center of her world who has spawned (not literally) a plethora of sheep around our house. Original ‘yam’ is no longer allowed out of our house after a scary gone missing episode so there are now several specific breeds of yams living here – there’s a daycare yam and a car yam and, well, you get the picture.
She’s finally learned to dance. She’s always been very good at slam dancing and had a promising future in the mosh pit but she’s finally getting it that the rest of her body can move, too. Now, if I could only undo the part where we thought it would be cute to teach her to sing and shake her KC and the Sunshine Band ‘booty.’ Yeah, it was cute when she was 18 months old – not so much now.
She’s our baby, our chick, chicklet, munchkin, chicken little, baby chick, silly goosey, baby turkey (to which she responds that Daddy is a big turkey – true words, little one) and many other nicknames (some that are even non-poultry) that came from out of nowhere. She can spell her name (thank heavens we gave her an easy one) and loves to look for A’s and V’s everywhere we go. I can sit her down with a word find puzzle book and it will keep her entertained endlessly while she looks for and circles all the A’s and V’s she can find. She can say her whole (very long) name with only a little prompting and already pronounces our multi-syllable and somewhat R-laden last name easier than I can after 14 years and better than 97% of the population does. She’s got our phone number down not at all (she can sorta get the numbers sometimes) and is convinced that 991 will connect her straight to the fire station.
Oh, and she does love the fire station. We must drive past ours at least once daily. That’s all J, by the way. She can spot a fire truck 42 miles away and will talk about it endlessly. You’d think I’d be used to this with her daddy already…
She’s a silly, funny girl who loves to laugh. She also loves to tickle and be tickled but only in the afternoon/evening. Heaven help you if you tickle her in the morning before she’s had a chance to fully wake up. You might pull back a bloody stump if you try. My little chick loves her sleep and will tell us it’s time for bed if we don’t have her tucked in by 8:30. She sleeps most nights from 8PM to 8AM and still naps for 2 hours during the day. The good sleep now is much appreciated after the not so much sleep after we first brought her home.
She’s failing (okay, they call it not progressing) Colors at daycare but after some frantic worry about colorblindness I’ve figured out that she knows her colors well enough but refuses to cooperate if you’re just flashing cards at her. So much for that compliance I was talking about earlier. And so much for all those visions I had pre-child of how much time we were going to spend on educational activities like flashcards. Well, she does like to carry them around in her purse so it’s not like it’s a total waste, I guess. Oh yeah, and her favorite color is purple.
She also has impeccable table manners for a toddler. She is all about no elbows on the table and will politely ask to be excused when she’s finished. The rule is that we all stay at the table until the meal is done and she’s pretty much fine with that. She is not allowed to be up and running around with food ever – at home or in public – and this has paid off for us in that we can pretty much take her anywhere to eat. It would only be more perfect if she came equipped with a working volume control button. She’s not quite consistently grasped the inside and outside voice concept yet.
I guess I could sum it all up by saying that she is most stupendous kid ever and we are blessed beyond measure to have her in our lives. She is kind and loving and fun and amazing and we love her more than anything in the whole world.
I agonized over what we would do for her third birthday party. How big? How elaborate? How many people? Where should we have it? What should the theme be? And so on and so on and so on. In fact, I agonized over it so long that I ran out of time to actually plan it.
So, in the absence of a better plan, on the Friday prior to the actual date we did a daycare party. I threw together a quick Sesame Street theme, ordered a (cupcake) cake, and J and I took a few hours from work off to go distribute cupcakes and pour juice.
The cake was cool. I think I want one for MY birthday. Half vanilla – half chocolate – and plenty of red food coloring.
It was a hit.
Just goes to show that for a successful party you really only need good company and lots of sugar – the bouncy castle and pony rides are clearly superfluous. The kids were thrilled with the Elmo plates! And the cupcakes! And the red juice! Apparently they talked about it all day long (and then some). They also took great pleasure in seeing who could smear the frosting from bow to stern the fastest. I so wish I could show you all the pictures and video because they were hysterical but I don’t want to post them without parents’ permission so I won’t.
And let me tell you, having a successful daycare party took a load off of me. I know I’ll have to suck it up at some point but I really didn’t want to this year when she still doesn’t quite get the whole birthday thing anyway. This left us free to just enjoy her birthday the (relatively) low stress way.
With presents:
I’ll spare you the 500 other photos showing (virtually) a time lapse sequence of the wrapping paper massacre that followed. You’re welcome.
Then a trip to the museum with Isabelle and family:
There was much joyful (and probably annoying to others) running. But since it was her birthday AND we were at a kid’s museum we let them have at it.
We did have a small mishap involving new shoes and a blister so J got tasked with tracking down a band-aid while I pocketed the offending shoes. While he filled out an incident report (mentally cursing me the whole time, I’m sure) and assured them we did not need additional medical attention I magically mama-produced a whole new pair of non-matching shoes. Being that he was the one who came back with a Scooby-Doo band-aid he, however, garnered all the glory.
Once the mangled limb tiny blister was treated our nature walk continued.
See, the daddies still getting all the lovin’. Not that the mamas minded a little time to chat. Nope, not at all.
After a little more Daddy playtime…
and some educational artwork…
it was time to say goodbye after a quick spin on the garden statuary.
We’d hoped to end the day with a lazy dinner and a trip to Build-a-Bear except life intervened and we ended up with a horrible dinner at a new Mongolian Grill (blech – non-authentic, overpriced, and horrid wait staff), a not quite open yet new B-a-B store. and J having to change some ladies’ flat tire on the side of the road because no one else would help them. Ava and I plopped down on a bench to observe the goings on.
He’s a good role model, I think. And it made him swear that she will learn how to change her own flat tire so as not to be stranded and helpless as these ladies were.
I think we might wait ’til she’s 4 to teach her that, though.
Mind you, in between all the gallivanting around there was also more cake, more gifts from friends and neighbors, and more birthday love than she’ll ever know. All in all, I think she had a pretty good birthday. I hope it will always be a happy day for her. I know it is for us.
Or maybe it is. Ava makes it look pretty effortless.
(Now that song is in your head, isn’t it?)
It’s not often you get to celebrate TWO holidays at the same time, eh?
First was Valentine’s Day. We waffled back and forth on whether to do Valentine’s cards or not for Ava’s daycare friends since the two year old class neither encouraged nor discouraged them and we ultimately decided not to bother – - – until I dropped her off at daycare on Friday and she pitifully asked me where hers were since nearly everyone else had sent bags full of cards and candy along with their kids. Of course I had to save the day and spent 1/4 of my workday hastily shopping for and assembling Chinese red envelopes, tiger valentines, and chocolate coins to be distributed at their Valentine’s party to be held later that afternoon, which I now had to leave work early for in order to attend since I had to deliver the valentines to distribute so we wouldn’t be forever known as the slacker parents.
Needless to say, it was not my most productive day at work. She, however, made out like a bandit. Who knew that Valentine’s is comparable to Halloween in regards to how much chocolate/sugared loot can be scored in one day?
Sorry, no pictures from the daycare party. Primarily since she wouldn’t leave my side for even one single minute once I walked into the room. It’s kind of difficult to take a picture of someone who’s physically attached to your leg.
She got her valentines from mama and daddy on Saturday morning. Of course Mama shopped for it all while Daddy got most of the glory for being the presenter but whatever. She was happy and Daddy now knows that his job is to ensure that she receives a heart box of chocolates every single year until (minimum) she turns 18. My dad did this for me for years and years and I loved it – I saved all the tacky lace and plastic flower decorated heart boxes for years until they all got thrown out (not by me) during a move. It meant the world to me and it’s a memory I want her to have.
Of course it was also Lunar New Year – so we had to welcome the Year of the Tiger in with much fanfare. We had tastefully decorated the house with some scattered lanterns and we’d swapped out last year’s ox for our new tiger.
Oh wait, did someone say new tiger? Oh yes, here he is in all his glittery glory.
We have some old tiger friends, too.
I cannot believe she used to wear these shoes, by the way. They’re so tiny. We bought them for her while we were in China and she wore them to her first FCC Chinese New Year party.
After she posed all her tigers for their photo shoots she consented to sit down and (sorta) allowed me to take her picture.
Sorta because she wasn’t given her hong bao until she sat at her table to fill the rice urn with rice and coins (unfortunately not gold coins but we’ll take any kind of extra prosperity we can get). Yes, we bribed her but she had loads of fun doing it once she gave it a shot.
Me? Not nearly as much fun as she did since I was cleaning up rice for a solid week afterward.
We finished up our New Year celebration with a lovely Chinese dinner out with friends. If only all holidays could be like this – low stress, minimal spend, and sharing good food and better conversations with family and friends.
Life IS good.
My fears were well founded. As soon as I got to my parents for the New Year holiday it snowed. With some ice thrown on top for good measure.
I spent 25 years living where it snowed with some regularity. I have many memories of sledding down the very steep hill in front of our house, of the joy of unexpected snow days, of snow cream and hot chocolate, of cobbled-together snow suits, and of bread bags pulled over your feet to try and keep them somewhat dry while spending hours and hours outside no matter the weather. I mention these things because, despite the fond memories of those experiences, I would be very happy to never see snow again. I do not like it. It’s cold and wet and, now that I’m an adult, I’ll pass.
Ava doesn’t like it either. She didn’t like being in it when we were in China nor did she like it the one time it snowed here (maybe 2″ max) the first winter she was home. But really, I thought she might dig it now that she was a little older.
Nope.
We did a quick walk outside which she did fine with until she realized that this was real, live snow. Or maybe it was the lack of snow boots that did her in?
And nope, no bread bags either. Apparently my mom quit saving those once she was all out of kids at home. Up until then she had about a gazillion tucked away for our use.
So – now that I have an unhappy toddler what do you think I did? Well, I video recorded her, of course. I even tried to distract her by tossing a snowball at her (which I have on tape) at which point she collapsed sobbing on the ground while I felt like a heel. (I’ll try to update the post later to add the video. It’s in the car right now and I’m too lazy to walk outside to get it.)
My payback for our approximately six minutes outside in snow hell was a wrenched back when I had to pick her up and carry her back inside on the slippery snow.
So, I rang in the New Year with one of my dogs, a heating pad, Dick Clark, and my Kindle (and the characters from a certain vampire book series that won’t be named) while crashed out on my parent’s couch. I called and woke J up just before midnight before heading to bed at a shameful 12:10AM.
Not my most exciting New Year’s Eve ever – but not my worst by a long shot either!