Due to some scheduling conflicts, we had Emily's birthday party this past Saturday, even though her birthday is still a week away. It went well....bummed though that my dad and stepmom couldn't make it. She just had surgery on her shoulder not even a week prior, and my dad was sick. But at least it opened up a little more room in our house, lol. Our house is perfect for us, but for get-togethers, it is too damn small. I looked around and see people eating standing up, balancing their plates on counter tops and shelves.
We have plans to get the basement finished one day which I am excited about, but as far as for more room for parties, that's not a great solution. I don't really want half the people upstairs and have downstairs. We have a deck off our kitchen which I do like, but we really don't use it that much. I think we should tear that out and build a four seasons room. Make sure there are enough windows that we can open and in the summertime, it will still be like having a deck, except you're shaded from the sun and bugs. For parties, people could flow between the living room, the kitchen and the four seasons room. Hmmm, maybe one day.
So Em's party theme was Minnie Mouse. I let her pick this year...usually, I just pick for her, but since she's getting older I figured she should be able to pick her theme. I kept decorations to a minimum...we had a few balloons, a Minnie mouse pinata, cheap Minnie invites from Target, and I bought some black paper plates and black cake plates from the dollar store. I cut out the center of the cake plates for ears, and attached them, along with a pink bow I printed off the computer to make Minnie plates. They turned out pretty cute. It was a lot of work, but they got a lot of compliments.
I found on Pinterest a template to print the ears and the bow in one piece, but I don't pay for my print cartridges, my boss does, and that would have taken a TON of ink to print the ears, so I went the cheaper but more labor-intensive route. I also got a bucket (I think it's actually a laundry basket) from $5 Below, filled it with beer and ice and put a sign on it that said We've got beers, say cheers!
One day I was cleaning out Em's closet and came across her Minnie Mouse dress she wore to Chef Mickey's in Disney World. She wanted to try it on so I humored her. I couldn't believe it fit! She wore that when she was 2 and she will be 4 next week. The top is very stretchy, and the skirt part did look a bit short because of how poofy it was, but it covered to her knees and didn't show her butt or anything, so I let her wear it for her party.
I usually try to alternate doing her "cake" each year....one year I make it, the next I buy it. I was up till 5am last year doing her little mermaid cake pops, so I was going to buy her cake this year. But then I found this cute idea for a Minnie silhouette on good 'ole Pinterest so I decided to give it a try. But to make things easier, we had lunch catered by Tubby's subs, and I figured next year for her 5th I'll want her cake to be professionally done so I gave it a go this year. We did well with keeping the house in order all week, so Saturday morning all I had to do was bake the cake and do a few random last minute things here and there. It was the first cake I'd ever made, so I was a little nervous. I apparently filled the cake pan too high for the first layer...it kind of rose up a little higher than the top of the pan and created a muffin-like top, and it took a million years to bake. But the lightbulb finally came on and I put the cakes outside in the grill to cool faster once they were done baking so I could frost them so that sped things up a little.
So basically I had a two-layer round cake for her face, and then I used two small pyrex bowls to bake the ears, and just set them on the cake board above the face....Em requested strawberry cake, so I used white frosting. I had a purple frosting writer, so I was going to use that edible spray stuff to give the white frosting a purple haze, but people would be arriving any minute so I skipped that I just wrote happy birthday on it. The writer should have been in the fridge because within a minute the letters began to bleed and run together. I got a picture while it was still somewhat legible, but by the time we served it, you could barely read it. Oh well, everyone said the cake looked good and it tasted good. Win win in my book.
So all the usual peeps came, Em's cousins and aunt and uncle, another cousin, my best friend, and her two boys, my inlaws, my brother and sister-in-law, and this year we invited my stepmom's nephew and his family....they get Emily and his daughter Annabella together now and again to play, so this was her first birthday party where we invited a friend.
They didn't get to stay long, her mom is pregnant and is due in like a week, so she felt like crap. I was amazed she came at all. I remember how awful that week to two weeks was. I constantly felt like I was sitting on a bike with no seat. So anyway, the party was good, food was great, the kids loved the pinata. I wasn't sure Emily would want to beat Minnie Mouse to death, but apparently knowing there was candy was enough incentive.
She got a lot of great presents....another My Little Pony figure, a Barbie car (to go with her Barbie camper, yay), Hungry Hungry Hippos game, a karaoke machine....I think that's about it. Good stuff. Today she went to my dad's as usual, and since they couldn't come to her party, they had brownies for her and she got to open presents from them. My stepmom got her a Minnie Mouse guitar and a Crayola stamp set, and my dad got her a Big Wheel. She loved that, he had it sitting out when I dropped her off and she was riding it all over the house. I foresee that getting a lot of use this spring and summer. She's going to be so spoiled this year....on Friday we're taking her out to celebrate her birthday, and then Monday on her actual birthday she'll get to open her presents from us. She'll think every year consists of several celebrations.
So she's all signed up for preschool in the fall...it's official, my baby is a big girl and will be leaving me 3 mornings a week :( It's really no different than what she does now....she'll go MWF for 2.5 hours I think. I'm hoping once I drop her off on Mondays and Wednesdays, my dad and MIL can just pick her up from preschool on their respective days and take her for the day like they do now so I can work....and then Friday will just be 2.5 hours away from me, that's no biggie. But still, starting preschool is the official start of being a big girl. She'll make friends, and learn a ton. Like I said, she almost always goes to a grandparents house on Mondays and Wednesdays, but if for some reason we didn't feel like going, or whatever, we just wouldn't. Back when she went to the daycare at the gym, she just went for the hour or a little more on whatever days I felt like going to the gym.
But preschool is going to be 3 set days that we pretty much have to go...we have to get into a morning routine. No more lazy days around the house, sometimes leaving the house, sometimes not. Then the following year is the real deal with kindergarten. Oh man, if I am feeling unsure about her being gone for preschool, I don't know how I am going to handle her being gone all day for kindergarten. I wish K was still half days. I'm sure she can handle it, but I am not sure I can!
Her preschool is really cute. It was my top pick, so I am glad she got into that one. We went to another open house before and got on the waitlist...that one was fine too, very nice teacher, nice looking program. But of the two, I liked the one she got into the best. She went to the open houses and she was so excited looking around at all the toys and stuff. I hope she loves it. I am so thankful that she does not appear to have the anxiety I had as a child. Occasionally she'll say she doesn't want to go somewhere, or she'll be extra clingy with me, but for the most part, she gets so excited about preschool whenever I talk about it, and she has loved her extracurriculars. Right now she is in swim lessons; she is doing really well.
I just cannot figure out how she is going to be 4 years old already, and where the time has gone. Aside from the two months I went back to work after maternity leave, I have spent nearly every day with her since she was born. She wouldn't nap in her crib till she was at least 6 months old, if not closer to 8 or 9, she would only nap on my chest....so every day for months once I became a stay at home mom, she and I would lie on the couch together and I'd put her paci in and I'd either rub her back or gently pat her on the butt....not sure why the butt things works, but it does, and after a few minutes she would fall asleep.
Sometimes I would lay there and just watch her, taking her all in. Listening to every little coo she made, staring at her face, memorizing the details. Most days I would also fall asleep too, and that was what we did every single day till she was almost a year old. We'd snuggle up on the couch together and nap. I occasionally felt guilty, thinking I should be using her nap time as a chance to get laundry done or other housework....I argued the point with my husband that being a stay at home mom wasn't being lazy, I was taking care of the house and our daughter...despite him coming home to a messy house because I had spent a couple hours on the couch with her every day, haha. But I finally decided that she would be a baby for such a short period of time, and I would never get that time back. The laundry and dishes and dirt would still be there tomorrow, but my chance to spend time with her as a baby would not.
No mom ever looks back on their kid's younger years and say, I should have spent more time doing housework. So for at least 14 hours a week I did nothing but snuggle her, and hold her, and watch her sleep, I appreciated the time. I made sure to take it all in and try to burn the memories in my brain. I didn't take for granted any of it, but here I am...I still feel like these last 4 years have gone by in a blur, and sometimes it seems difficult to remember her as a baby. I look forward every morning to my "on this day" post on facebook of what I posted that day other years, and I am always surprised at how little she was and how cute. She's still cute of course, but I am always shocked to see how babyish she still looked at 2 years old, and now she looks so much more grown up.
Sigh, it's every mother's dilemma, the joy, and pride in seeing their children grow up and become self-sufficient, happy people....all the while crying inside about how quickly they grew up, and how much they miss their little baby. I am sure in another couple years I'll think back to now and think, at 4 she was still so little. How could I think she is so grown up compared to ______fill in the blank age. The quote "the days are long but the years are short" is so very very true. Please slow down time!
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