Three!: The Birthday Party

My little party-planner-in-training came into her own this year. She was very excited about her party, from her theme (Princesses, naturally, and we picked her dress out weeks in advance.) She loves the dollar store, and picked out her plates and decorations and the all-important party hats. And her own tiara. We are big on tiaras in our house.

We needed chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles for our guests. I made the cupcakes, but Gwen was all about the sprinkles. Pink and purple sparkle sugar, and pink sugar balls that crunched in everyone's teeth. She even let Adessa help, which meant that the sprinkle distribution was ... a little uneven, shall we say? But the cupcakes were still pretty.

The kids had a great time playing around and wearing their hats. No, really, Ryan's having a blast.

And Elvi got to play with Baby Eliana. You know she was happy.

Then we sang the song (see the end of the last post) and ate the cupcakes and then, oh yeah, there were presents. Lots and lots of presents. (I should be writing thank-you notes right now, actually.)
And then the party was over, pretty much. Until this happened:

This is the new princess dress that the Brauns gave her for Christmas, complete with matching gown for our cross-dressing lion. He's a very good sport, you know.

And then this happened:

Those are the lacing beads from Adessa. Rutherford is helping.

And this:

Which pretty much summed up how Gwen felt about the whole day.

Birthdays and other happenings

Cupcakes are a big hit in Rutherford's house. One of us, who shall not be named, but shall be prominently featured in photographs, call them puckcakes. Which is less of a comment on my baking skills than on her speaking ones, but it did throw me there for a while. Particularly because she really likes pancakes, too, so I kept getting mixed up.

Today we made yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting for Jim, who turned ... well let's just say he's in the last year of his midforties - on Friday. Gwennie wore her little apron, and dumped ingredients into the bowl with great glee. She gets a little mad when I want to actually stir things myself. "My turn!" she yells, and then she flicks a great glob of the batter over the edge of the bowl. Still, she does pretty well for a two -year-old.

Here's Gwennie enjoying hers:

Oh, it was yummy. It took a long long bath to get all the chocolate off of her.

And this is the girl on her birthday, last December, when her mama specifically did not make chocolate frosting. Nana's banana cupcakes with whipped cream frosting for the totlets. Made for less dramatic pictures, but they were a big hit with her little friends and their mamas. (Jim's more of a classicist.) Plus she's got the way cute birthday girl t-shirt on, and the pigtails, and oh I could eat her own little whipped cream self up. Except it's almost 10 and she's not asleep, which is bringing out other less attractive tendencies in me. I passed the shirt on to one of her friends, and I'm hoping to get a whole chain of pictures of two-year-old Santa Cruz girlies in it.

She has had a couple of rough nights sleeping, which has left her father and I all zombied out. I'm just waiting for her to fall asleep now before I hit the rack, too. I may be waiting a long time.

She had her 2 year check up this week, and everything looks great. The only weird thing is, she's now really big for her age. She was born 5 weeks early at 7 lbs, 3 oz., but then she was in the 5th percentile at 6 months. I kind of got used to her being little. Somewhere in the last 6 months, that changed. I knew she'd been growing a lot, but seeing the numbers - and the little dot on the dr.'s chart - was a bit of a jolt.

But look at her - she's clearly a happy, healthy kid. This was her at the beach during our winter heat wave last week:

She likes the sand waaaay more than the ocean at this point.

Cutest thing right this moment: She's got a few new phrases that she's using. "Come along" as in "Come along, Daddy, play blocks" and "Come along, Mama, time to go!" My personal favorite is "There you go!" "There you go, Rufford! New diaper!" "There you go, blocks! No fall!" All siad in a little piping voice. "There you go!" Not-so-cute-thing: the word "mine!" is now a big part of the vocabulary.

Here's the blast from the past, since I did a lousy job of blogging the last few months. This is the

Girl with our gingerbread house from Christmas. Doesn't she look grown up? The raccoons loved the fact that we composted it right after the picture. They tore apart the composter in their food-coloring-and sugar frenzy. The lid was halfway down the hill, the top tier of the composter was askew, and there were nibbled remains of gingerbread scattered around. Oh well, at least it stayed out of the landfill. And out of Gwen, for that matter.

Jim's still looking for a job, I'm still subbing and not looking hard enough for more work, but for the most part, we're doing ok here on top of our little hill. I won't go as long between posts, I promise.