Thursday, June 12, 2014

2

Emma,

I can't believe it my dear, the year has passed and watching quietly from my perch, you have gone from a happy go lucky baby to an energetic, opinionated toddler.

The year brought major challenges and triumphs. The "terrible twos" actually started around a year and a half and the tantrums were pretty grusome in the beginning, mostly becasue I didn't know how to handle them. Defiance and testing boundaries has also become a common occurance and major challenge for me to learn how to discipline while nurturing and making teachable moments. I hope I am doing my best to teach you the reasoning behind why you need to do certain things, even if you don't want to do them.

The triumphs have been nothing sort of amazing as I have gone from steadying you while you walk to you now confidently taking off running down the sidewalk. You moved from the "binki" and the bottle to feeding yourself with a fork (sometimes) and drinking from a big girl cup. We have also hit a major potty training milestone (going to the potty unassisted at daycare!) You are happy to go at school but home is another story. We're working on it, but either way I am so thrilled you are moving forward!

Besides the obvious physical triuphs, you continue to amaze me with your brilliant mind. You catch onto concepts so easily, like up and down, empty and full. You know a lot of shapes and colors and we are starting to work on identifying ABCs and numbers! You like to "read" books to us right after we read them to you (aka you memorize what we just read and say it back to us.) You know about a dozen songs and love to sing them in the car.

Besides your amazing mind is your incredible sense of adventure. You will try anything once and love being flipped and thrown in the air (courtesy of daddy as mommy stands by watching in stunned horror.) Ever since you learned how to jump, you will not stop and it's one of your greatest joys. You delight in the simple things. You love collecting rocks and transporting them in your pockets or dump truck. You love being outside and going on "nature walks" which we do frequently. I hope you never lose your love of nature. I am going to encourage and support it as much as I can (even if it means venturing outside in 80+ degree heat.)

You are an outgoing, social butterfly in some situations, but are shy and quiet in others, It's so fun to see you become comfortable with your surroundings and go from a quiet wall flower to an energetic attention seeker.

Some Highlights from the year:
My cell phone camera is always on ther verge of photographic meltdown so I did not capture nearly enough of our adventures (in my opinion) but these are the most memorable.


The day after your first birthday hanging out in your first kiddie pool!

Hanging out with your cousin

First little pony tail!

4th of July

 First trip to the beach!

 First pony ride!




Visit with Santa (you would not sit with him without me) 


 Halloween! Little Red Ridding hood!


Playing in the leaves

 First "flight"

 First trip to the aquarium!

 First real romp in the snow

 First time flying a kite!

 First Easter egg hunt!

 First gymnastics class!

 I did my best to document this past year and I can't wait for what next year will bring.

Love,
Mom

Monday, June 9, 2014

The Second Birthday


It flew by like a dream. It was months ago when I started planning the celebration, coming up with contingency plans for the weather, deciding on food/ cake/ venue, and figuring out every little detail in between. I honestly started planning this party so long ago that I thought it would take forever to get here but sadly time once again won the battle and it's over, gone. My child is two years old now and I am sitting here left in the after party dust, cake frosting and paper product bits are all that's left. It kind of reminds me of the opening scene from "Father of the Bride: where Steve Martin is sitting in his living room with all of the decorations falling down and a bunch of half full champagne glasses and pieces of uneaten cake haphazardly lying about. You look up and realize it's over, that moment is gone forever. But thankfully, I got to take the birthday girl home. She hasn't left me yet! I got to take her home to share in the special moments that only we share and enjoy the inside jokes we have (doughy is a current one - yeah you had to be there.) I got to go to the pool with her the next day and let nothing else distract me, which was the real birthday gift.

The party was a flurry of running around, setting up, leaping on a train, throwing cake at people, and then tearing everything down. I didn't spend nearly enough time with the actual birthday girl or enough time catching up with my friends who I rarely see. It's almost like I was setting myself up for failure by inviting a bunch of people I couldn't wait to talk to and then expecting myself to have time to pay full attention to the birthday girl, all while making sure the ice bucket stayed full. This is how I really felt and this is why next year, I am finally going to embrace the immediate family only birthday party. It was fun for Emma to have a bunch of other kids to play with but honestly when I did get a look at her between the balloons and the ice cream, she looked bewildered, lost....overwhelmed. I think that is the word I am looking for. Maybe big birthdays are meant for big kids and I think I will leave it at that for now.

Overall, the party was a success in that most of the kids seemed to be amused during the 2 hour time span and we didn't run out of pizza, which was my biggest fear. Since I was spending too much time doing unimportant things, I barely got any pictures. I am upset at myself for this but honestly, it was what it was and now you all get to use your imaginations! I know I am an enabler of imaginative wonder!

The party was in a big room at a local park. They had plenty of tables and seating. I was very happy about that. Of course we went with a Mickey Mouse theme (I have a blog post written about Emma's love of Mickey but haven't gotten around to posting it or much else lately which is another post altogether.) I went Party City all the way with the decorations, except the Happy Birthday banner. I made one last year so I decided to carry out the tradition and make one this year inspired by one I found on Pintrest of course.




That was the only thing I made besides the goodie bags (between the banner and the goodie bags I can now professionally free hand cut the Mickey Mouse solute. Hey who says you don't acquire amazing skills from a birthday party!) I did have a last minute panic attack the night before when I foolishly logged onto Pintrest and saw a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter. Of course! I can make EVERYTHING Mickey shaped! I then proceeded to spend Saturday morning scouring the county for this phantom cookie cutter. I gave up after a while and decided my banner was enough of a showcase piece to distract people from seeking out other mouse themed decor/ sustenance.



We had an amazing Costco pizza and cake, both of which turned out well.With everything else, I decided an elaborate cake would be too much so we settled on the Costco cake with Mickey figurines strategically placed. I sadly did not get any pictures of the cake but I feel like the hand placed figurines payed homage to birthday cakes of my childhood.

The big thing at the party was the train ride! It was the longest stretch of time I spent with Emma at the party and also the longest I sat down. It was glorious.

Everyone seemed to have a good time and I feed the kids just enough sugar to rev them up during the party to hopefully have them crash on the car ride home. As for Emma, she was surrounded by family and friends who love her, what could be better...well maybe ice cream!






And that was it, I was George Banksed. It all happened in the blink of an eye. That's it, that's all, that's 2.