Archive for November, 2010

My dear sweet Olivia- First, just be glad that I am getting to your birthday post before the New Year! I mean, you did turn three in October and it is only now Thanksgiving weekend so I am clearly way ahead of my usual game here. Turning three was a big deal for you! Perhaps it is a symptom of being the younger child, but you had been talking about your birthday since you were 2 1/2. In fact, you don’t really like to acknowledge the solid numbers. You much prefer the birthday number plus the extra 1/2. In this way, you always said, “I’m gonna be 3 1/2″ whenever anyone commented on your upcoming birthday.

You started preschool this fall, so we had a small party and you got to invite your friends from school. This was a big deal for you and you were super excited, all the way from making the invitations to planning out the cake that you wanted (thanks to Grandma for the awesome Care Bear rendition). I think you really enjoyed being the center of attention for the day (who doesn’t).

You have really transformed recently into such a fun little girl. Maybe it is going to school, maybe it is finally breaking into the world of having a full conversational vocabulary, maybe it is just your own timeline… but I recently looked down and realized that you are no longer a toddler. You are little girl! A little girl with an amazing imagination. You can play for hours (really, hours… which is like days in the adult attention time frame) on your own with little figurines or toys or dolls. I love to listen to you when you are in the midst of this, because you don’t just play ordinary things. You always have great huge stories that go along with whatever you are playing. These usually involve sharks and hot lava and someone breaking rules and getting into terrible trouble at which point they are saved by another brave character or simply told, “Oh, that’s too bad. I hope you make a better choice next time” (hhhhmmm, wonder where you heard that one). You love to dress yourself and to pick out all your own outfits, most of which I don’t even need a sign to alert people to the fact that you are clearly in charge of your own wardrobe. You are really creative in so many ways! You love music and any kind of arts and crafts. Painting, coloring, and simply cutting paper into designs are all favorite past times. You also LOVE to cook. You are my biggest helper in the kitchen. Weekend pancakes and waffles are your specialty, but you are also pretty big on banana bread and any dish where you can chop things with your kiddie knife. Unfortunately, this love of cooking hasn’t transferred into a love of eating all foods. You are a picky, picky, picky eater. Dinnertime never goes down easy with you.

You are like a sparkly little sugar cube in our family. Oh so sweet, quick to melt, very sensitive to your surroundings and people’s words or actions, but such a wonderful addition to our mix. You are very loving and are definitely the cuddle bug of our family. You are also pretty funny, and love to share laughs with people. You are not aggressive and don’t need to be the center of the show, but you are also not overly shy. You seem perfectly content to just be you, and this is really one of my most favorite things about you. I hope that you carry this with you always. Sweet, creative, imaginative, sensitive, and brilliant little sugar cube that you are.

We cannot allow Thanksgiving to arrive without honoring Halloween! And, what a fun Halloween this year. This year, Ava is in kinder so she didn’t get to go on the annual pumpkin patch trip. However, Olivia Quinn did! And boy, was she proud to show off her pumpkin to big sister.

Costumes were fun this year. When Olivia told me in July that she was going to be a shark for Halloween, I just nodded and waited for the wind to change. Only, it didn’t. And as the months grew closer, and my little (then) 2 year old still held fast in her shark desires, I realized that I was going to need to find such a costume. Who knew that there must have been lots of like-minded 2 year olds, since Old Navy had just such an outfit this year!

Ava wanted to be a penguin, which we borrowed from a good friend over a month ago before Halloween ever arrived. She has been wearing it around on random days leading up to the legitimate day for costume wear. I drew the line when she asked if she could sleep in it.

Mia was a pumpkin, because… well, she is the third child and still has no say in anything that occurs in her life. It was given to us, she was cute in it… what more is there? I wasn’t sure that Mia would really be into Halloween this year. HA! Seriously, which part of free candy did I underestimate my 19 month old would not understand? It only took one confused trip to the neighbors’ front door, followed by realization that yelling “trick-or-treat” would net her one tasty chocolate goodness (which she promptly ate before even making it down the driveway) for her to be fully committed and on to the next house. As she looked over at me, her slightly confused, chocolate covered expression read, “This is the MOST AWESOME day E.V.E.R, and while I have no idea why you are allowing me to do this, I’m going to keep going until you wake up and stop me.”

And sweet baby Charlotte (who really deserves a post of her own on here, even though she isn’t technically one of mine)… was a soft baby green dragon who peacefully slept in some adult’s arms the entire trick-or-treating trip. If she wasn’t so damn cute I would be really mad at the fact that she has already (at 6 weeks) single handedly destroyed my notion that “my kids are totally normal and all babies are this fussy, active, busy, and demanding”. But, we’ll save that post for another day. Right now we’re talking cute kids in cute costumes.