We had a fantastic party for Lex this weekend
(if I do say so myself). Lots of family and friends. The
weather was perfect, as it has been for his birthday every year
so far! I was trying to come up with some organized games, but
it was tough because of the age range of the kids and because I
wasn’t really sure who would even be there. Instead we did a
bunch of activity stations, including bubbles, balloon animals
(thanks Julie!), ball pool (the hit of Lex’s 2nd bday party),
face painting, ice cream sandwich making (thanks Ellen!), etc.
The kids basically ran around and played with everything. We
also have the swing set my parents got Lex last year, a big
slide that our neighbor gave us as a hand-me-down, and the new
picnic table from my parents this bday. There was lots for the
kids to do. We also had lots of food, especially considering it
was a 2-4ish party, between lunch and dinner. I have this
not-so-odd need to have lots and lots of food available for any
event :) Alan’s mom made fried chicken and deviled eggs, my mom
made tofu salad, and I made a watermelon bowl fruit salad,
brownies, and other stuff. It was great. Now we will be eating
leftovers for a very long time :) Lex asked for a square cake,
so I made him an alphabet block type cake – 4 square cakes
layered on top of each other, bordered with Twizzlers and
decorated with a frosting “3” on top, “Happy Birthday” on one
side, and “L”, “E”, “X” on the other three sides. It held
together, looked good and tasted excellent! :) Overall I think
everyone had fun. Lex, surprisingly, took a nap and I woke him
up when everyone started arriving and asking for the birthday
boy. Not surprisingly it took him a few minutes to warm up to
the crowd, but then he had a great time.

I also wanted to add a note about Lex’s recent burst of
independence. He’s been dressing himself and wanting to do some
things on his own for awhile, but lately he suddenly wants to
do EVERYTHING for himself. He makes his own snack mix
(Goldfish, Annie’s Bunnies, and dried fruit), pour his own
cereal, pour his own milk!, get his own Zone bars, cup of
water, etc. It’s a little scary, but for the most part he does
pretty well. The first day he asked to make his own snack I
immediately thought “no way!” but was able to control that
impulse and I let him make it (with my oversight and small
assistance) and he did really well. So now I’m trying to let
him do as much as he wants to on his own, within reason and
safety, of course. He even helps with Eve more and more,
feeding her, getting things for her, putting her shoes on for
her, etc. As I’ve said many times before, it’s so amazing to
watch a kid grow and learn and develop into an independent
person. We are very lucky to have this opportunity,
twice!

(This post was interrupted by some thumping and
bumping upstairs. I went up to find Lex with wet PJs and a wet
bed, saying “My bed is all wet. I wanted to see what was in my
cup” (water cup). The big dresser drawer was wide open (he was
trying to get new sheets) and the diaper pail tipped over (he
climbed on it to open the drawer). As I was changing the sheets
he said he needed a new diaper and promptly dropped his diaper
on the floor and headed to the dresser for a new one. I turned
around and saw a poopy diaper laying on the floor and Lex
dashing across the room. Too much independence!! And poor Eve
laying sleepily in her crib wishing we would all just go away.
Note that I started a new bar down the side with Lex quotes. He
says some great stuff sometimes and I often wish I wrote things
down so I could remember them later. So now I will! He’s going
to be very embarrassed by this blog
someday.)

And now the
moment you’ve all been waiting for… Blogger does a terrible
job of putting pics inline, which is why I’ve been throwing
them at the end lately. Makes it easier to add captions too. I
won’t post all 444 pictures here, just a few ;) Here we
go…

Eve
chillin’ in the ball pool before the party got started. Once
Lex fell asleep for his nap we all went outside and set up all
the activity stations, got the balloons in place, food out,
etc.

Drooly
girl!

Eve in
her party dress. I’ve decided 1yr is the most photogenic time.
Kids are so personable and silly and not at all camera shy.
Makes for great pictures.

I
thought it would be fun to get a picture of all of the kids
sitting on the new picnic table. Challenging, but worth it.
What I didn’t expect is that all the kids would settle in
nicely, except the birthday boy!! Rose and Joyce were snapping
awhile (I’ll post the whole series on the photo site soon) and
still we were unable to get a picture without me holding Lex in
place. Oh well, it’s a very nice group shot anyway. Maybe
someday I’ll edit myself out :)

For
weeks Lex has been asking to “play running games at my birthday
party.” And by “running games” he means my modified version of
Red Rover. We weren’t able to get all the kids playing, but I
got these four running pretty fast for awhile. I think it
satisfied Lex’s desire for running games.

Cake
time! It took a group effort to blow out the candles… but
notice who isn’t helping? :)

Mema and
Eve.

Time for
presents! This is the first time that I wasn’t involved in the
unwrapping process with my kids. Rose and Joyce helped Lex,
Barney took notes, and I socialized and kept the rest of the
party going. It was interesting later that night to go through
the gifts and see what he got.

Quick
reading break.

What’s a
party without wrapping paper fights?

One
benefit of outdoor parties. They really get some air, don’t
they?!?

The
party tired Molly right out!

The
party tired Lex right out too! Jim made him a party mix CD, so
Lex spent some time mellowing out, eating a snack and listening
to music.

That’s
one very happy 3yr old!

The next
day in the front yard.

I will try and put all (or at
least lots more) of the photos up on the photos site soon. I
also have to give photo credits to Rosy, Joyce and Barney. My
camera wasn’t working well and most of the pics came from their
cameras (or B using my camera). I love having other people in
charge of photography :) Thanks!!

Three years ago today I woke up at 5:30 with
labor pains, today it was 5:30 with a crying 3yr old (he fell
out of bed). We cuddled for awhile and got up a 6:00 to start
our day. He is very excited about his cake and party. Here’s a
quick picture of my 3yr old playing with his new game from Aunt
Mandy. Looks very grown up, doesn’t he. Maybe we’ll get a smile
a little later in the day :) Happy Birthday little
man!!

This is for my reference more than
anyone’s interest, but we turned Eve’s car seat around
yesterday for our trip to MA. The past few days the scale has
said 22lbs, so I thought she was probably ok. I always think
the babies are going to love facing forward, but with each of
them they’ve been fairly indifferent :) Alan loved being able
to put the seat back to a comfortable position though, and I
love reaching into the backseat and saying “hi five” and
feeling a little Eve hand reach back. So all is good
:)

Eve is getting pretty good at baby signs
lately and yesterday even put together a phrase! We were
visiting with Jim & Julie and eating Kimball’s ice
cream (yummy!!). Eve, my little beggar, was standing next to
me, sharing my ice cream. She would point at the ice cream and
grunt, but when I said “do you want more?” she’d do the sign
for more. Then she started doing the sign without the grunting
:) Then she did the signs for “eat” and “more” then pointed at
the ice cream. I think that counts as a 3 “word” communication!
Good baby girl!

As an aside, I was a
very bad mommy. I was eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream
and we were talking about how Julie doesn’t eat chocolate now
because it make Molly fussy. We were laughing and eating and
after several minutes I realized that I was feeding Eve
chocolate PEANUT BUTTER ice cream! Bad mommy!!! Of course I
realized this just after she did her impressive 3-sign request
:/ I had to make her go beg daddy for ice cream. Luckily she
was really only licking my spoon, not getting much ice cream in
her, and either didn’t get any or at least not enough of the
peanut butter to cause a problem. It reconfirms my thoughts
that if she does have an allergy to peanuts it isn’t too severe
of one. I am still very eager to get the testing done so we
know for sure! And I’ll try hard to remember that peanut butter
is peanut butter, even if it’s in super delicious ice
cream!

Lex has suddenly become very good with
“thank you’s.” Almost every time you give him something or do
something or whatever, he says “thank you” in his sweet little
voice. He also says, “Oooh, I love milk! Thank you Mommy!” It’s
very cute. And polite!

A few days ago, as I was trying to get us all
out the door to go somewhere, Lex found some stickers in our
art drawer. I told him that I bought them awhile ago to
encourage him to use the potty, but they didn’t work (just
being honest with the kid). He thought for a moment then said
“I wanna pee on the potty now and get a sticker!” This wasn’t
terribly helpful to my get-out-the-door plans, but you can’t
really say no to a kid who wants to use the potty. So we did.
While he was sitting there I asked if he thought it would be a
good idea to have a sticker chart and when he gets five
stickers he can watch a show (I was making this all up on the
fly). He loved the idea, so I hurriedly made a chart and he put
his sticker on it. He was very excited! After he got the first
five stickers I asked him to get me a marker so I could write
five more numbers on the chart. While I was cleaning the potty,
he got a marker and wrote on the next five squares. He didn’t
exactly write numbers, but he marked the squares and was very
proud of himself, so now he’s pretty much managing the chart on
his own :) When I went to the pharmacy Sunday I bought a few
new sets of stickers for the effort and he loved the puffy Pooh
ones (puffy stickers don’t actually stick very well though!)
Now he’s asking to pee on the potty frequently. Still wants
diapers instead of underwear, but that’s ok. Baby steps for the
little guy :)

It’s official – Eve is weaned. And she
effectively did it herself. Tuesday night we got some books and
sat down to read and nurse, as is our normal routine. Eve was
very happy about her book and did not want to nurse. I asked if
she wanted to nurse and pulled at my shirt (the baby sign for
nursing), normally she nods and tugs at my shirt eagerly then
tries to get herself into the nursing position, but Tuesday
night she just ignored me and tried to get me to read her book
instead. So she went to bed with no nursing. On Wednesday and
Thursday I asked her if she wanted to nurse at all the regular
nursing times (morning, before pm nap, and night) but she
always crawled away or ignored me. Wednesday night she slept
through the night, however last night she was up at 2:00am
wailing. I tried to soothe her and give her the plug, but she’d
have none of it. I put Lex in my bed (he woke up saying “Eve is
angry”) then I sat on the floor with her and for the first time
in days she tried really hard to nurse. I thought long and hard
about it (parenting is full of tough decisions) but decided not
to. Instead I snuggled her and told her that she’s getting to
be a big girl and we are all done nursing and I love her and
will always cuddle and other sweet things. Oddly enough, she
settled right down. After a few minutes I put her pacifier in
her hand and she popped it right into her mouth (instead of
throwing it across the room like she’d been doing). We stayed
that way for awhile, sitting on the floor, rocking back and
forth, me whispering sweet nothings to her, and her falling
asleep on me. It was sweet and a little sad to say goodbye to
the nursing connection.

Baby Signs are fantastic! Eve is on a bit
of a language burst and she’s been learning a lot of them
lately. She knows some animals (fish, dog, and bunny – thanks
to the Easter basket), but more importantly she knows nap,
plug, eat, more, and all done. This morning she was fussing and
I was about to put her in the high chair for breakfast (she’d
already nursed) but she started doing the nap sign over and
over. I got her a plug and put her to bed and she fell right
asleep! Had she not known signs we would have had a fussy
breakfast that she didn’t really want. The other day I was
going to take them both grocery shopping, but it was getting
late and into her nap time and she started doing the signs for
plug and nap over and over. Gotta love it!

Eve is sooo close to walking :) She’s been
cruising for awhile and now she takes a few steps between
things. I think as soon as she realizes she can walk she’ll be
on the go. At Dylan’s party yesterday I sat down about 3ft away
from her and called her. She had just cruised around the room
and reached the last piece of furniture and couldn’t go any
further. I called her name and she let go and took about 5
steps, controlled fall sort of steps, towards me. Any day now
she’ll realize that she’s actually walking :) Then she’ll never
look back!