1095 Days

Baby Girl,

You are officially 3 years old. Over 1,000 days have passed since we first laid eyes on the screaming little girl who would turn our lives upside down and inside out….a little girl who would show us what the truest love feels like.

This past year was one of extreme challenges with your daddy being gone. I knew it was going to be hard….and it was….but you handled the upheavel so well. You amaze me every.single.day. Many days ended with one or both of us in tears and fustrated with each other, but part of me misses that special time when it was just you and I. I was so blessed to get so much alone time with you before your little brother was born. I will always cherish those days. You were my little sidekick and travel buddy….It was amazing.

So who are you at a big 3 years old? You are an open sweet little girl who LOVES everyone! It amazes me that you are such a social butterfly considering you refused to go to anyone but mommy for the first 2yrs of your life!! I never imagined there would be a day when you would happily run off to play with kids or other adults with barely a nod in my direction! You are a bundle of energy that pops awake at 6:30 every morning ready to run downstairs, throw open my door yelling “morning mommy!!!” and start your day…..you definitely get that from your daddy because mommy needs a lot of time to wakeup and get going! You are a little girl that loves anything to do with princesses, pirates, tinkerbell, puzzles, and the zoo. You ask to go to the zoo every.single.night when going to bed. Luckily your daddy is an early riser and loves the zoo as much as you! It has become your special outing very week.  Your other obsession is with violins! You love anything that looks like a violin and request to watch Mr. Rogers Violin episode repeatedly. You have even started demanding to listen to “your violins” in the car (ie- any classical music). I guess it is  time to look into lessons!You are fully potty trained and require no help. You go to sleep at 7pm without a fight and sleep a full 12hrs most nights (except for the occasional nights of night terrors!)….amazing considering how your sleep patterns were the first 18mo of your life! You know all your letters (upper & lowercase) and their sounds. You know your colors and shapes (even hard ones like trapezoid and hexagon!). You can count to 20 and write your H’s. The speed you pick up things amazes me everyday! You have even learned to sight recognize your name, Jacob, mommy and daddy!

You are the most amazing big sister. I knew you would be great at it but you far surpassed my expectations. You are crazy about your little brother and he is crazy about you. I have found the most amazing sound that will almost bring me to tears…the sound of the two of you laughing and giggling at each other. My prayer is that you are always this close. Being a “military brat” means that friends will be always changing as we move every few years, the one constant in your life it your baby brother. Cherish that relationship.

I have struggled with this birthday harder than your other two. I couldn’t pin point what exactly was tearing me up until the other day it came to me. This is the year that you put your first little toe out of my nest. You start preschool in a few months…the first time I will drop you off somehere and leave expecting someone else to mold your little mind. You are going to do amazing…I have no question on that…and you will love every minute of it. I can’t wait to see you learn knew things and I hope you keep your love of learning, but it shows me just how much you have grown. This is also the year that all your activities change from being “mommy and me” classes to just a class for you. The smallest of steps …just inches but it is the beginning of you becoming a self-sufficient individueal who will one day jump from the nest and head out for your own. It is amazing to watch and experience…but bittersweet and emotional.

The most amazing thing I have ever done was become a mommy. I am so happy that I have such an amazing kiddo as you to practice on! I’m sure your brother appreciates it! 😉  Your little voice asking for “kisses and hug” or “a cuddle” can make a bad day a million times better. Your daddy and I feel like we do not know what we are doing 90% of the time but seeing you thrive tells us we must not be doing too bad!

I love you to the moon and back baby girl! Happy 3rd birthday sweet baby!!!!!!

Harper’s Birthday Party

What a weekend!! I am exhausted and ready to sleep for a few days (yeah right!). Harper’s birthday party was a blast even though illness hit almost half of our guest list on the day of. We had way too much food for those that came but it turned out perfect with the kiddos that could come….honestly it would have probably beena little too crazy if everyone had come! J

After giving Harper a few different theme ideas she chose a pixie party because she is in LOVE with all things tinkerbell. She watches the movie a million times and is always running (flying) around the house looking for her sister periwinkle. Too cute! I love planning parties and entertaining so once I had the theme I went with it.

I am not a big fan of favor bags at kiddo parties. It always ends up being stuff that kids look/play with for 2 seconds and then either litters tha car or gets tossed. With that in mind I decided to have costumes for the kids that went along with the theme that they could then take home with them for favors. For the girls we had tutus/wings/wands to make them into little fairies and for the boys we had pirate capes with swords and eye patches. It seemed to be a big hit with the kids taking turns being pirates or pixies (or a mixture of both!). Hopefully they were a hit at home, and if not…well what can you do?! 😉

 

I love the look of a big dessert table so we had all types of sweet treats load the kids up on sugar (I’m stingy with sweets and my kids but on birthdays they can go hog wild!). We did attempt to “close down” the sweets table at one point in the party after the kiddos had eaten plenty…..but we later figured out that Harper was sneaking downstairs and grabbing cookies which she later handed out to her friends when we were not looking. Sneaky little thing! The sugar highs were hilarious to watch, the kids were practically vibrating! 😉

 

 

 

The crown jewel of the sweet table was Harper’s crazy big birthday cake! I love to bake and often make cakes for Dan to take to work so naturally I wanted to make Harper her birthday cake. I couldn’t decide on which flavor to go with (funfetti or chocolate) so I decided to do my first tiered cake and have both! However my cake recipe makes a TON of batter so after I made the chocolate cake I still had leftover batter. Batter is not allowed to go to waste in my house so a third tier was added to the cake! We had enough cake for over 100 people (wedding portions). The bottom tier was funfetti almond cake with raspberry filling, the middle was chocolate cake with nutella buttercream filling, and the top was chocolate cake with chocolate chip buttercream filling. Delicious! I covered it all with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream which is harder to work with and melts easily but tastes soooo much better than American buttercream! We cranked the AC down as far as it would go and prayed for the best. It had some slippage (so by the end of the party it was a pretty tilted cake!) but it survived and by the end of the party we only had about 1/3 of it left! Guess it couldn’t have tasted that bad! 😉

 

For most of the party we just let the little ones run around in our playroom. I did have an art station set up for the little artists to paint their own fairy house or pirates chest and we pulled out bubbles for extra fun! It was nice actually having people come to our house to play! Most playdates we go to are on the other side of town where all our mommy friends are (we moved to this side of town last year to be closer to Dan’s work but I wish we would have stayed on the west side so we were closer to Harper’s activities!).

 

 

 

The most shocking thing about the weekend was that almost my entire family came down!!! Everyone stayed at our place (tight fit!) and it was the first time my family has actually stayed in the same place like that. Crazy! Our family dynamics are….interesting….so I was curious on how it would play out but it was great and I loved getting time to catch up with everyone. They are all insane (isn’t everyone’s family?!) but you gotta love them! 😉

Now it is time to take down the decorations and attempt to clean ththis amazing mess of a house. I’m also going to need to pawn off a lot of sweets or I will not be playing in a bathing suit this summer!!!