Let her eat cake

Sophia had quite the celebration for her first birthday. There were family members and neighbors and friends with kids. There was a full house.

The "smash" cake
There was a bubble theme for the party. The fountain was filled with bubbles and there was a bubble machine blowing across the patio. It was a huge hit with the toddler crowd.
Katherine loved the treat of a juice box. I personally hate juice boxes because they make huge messes but under dad's supervision they are great fun.
Watching a one year old explore their cake is always a lot of fun. I must say that Sophia had more fun than any other one year old I have seen. She was slow to start, Katherine had to give her a taste of the icing so she would know how yummy it was. But, after awhile, she was having a ball with the icing.
Notice Katherine is feeding Sophia while Sophia is feeding the dog Trent. (Note: chocolate icing produces a sick dog later in the evening)

This is getting really fun guys!



Yummy, look at these hands!

After cake came presents. Katherine was quite the helper and opened more presents than Sophia did. She also wanted to play with all of the toys. With her birthday being next week we have been talking about birthday parties quite a bit. She may have been confused about whose party this was.

California, here we come.

Last weekend we went to California for Sophia's first birthday. This was Katherine's 12th round trip plane ride in under two years. We have gotten our money out of the under two year old lap child policy and do not look forward to having to pay full price for all future travel. We have all three become pros at airline travel with a toddler. We were lucky to have an extra seat on the plane on the way up there. Though I am sad that we will have to begin paying for Katherine's plane tickets, it is much easier to travel when she has her own seat.

We arrived to beautiful weather in Sacramento. There are a few parks near Will's house so we took the girls to get out some energy.
Katherine has become a lot more independent and daring recently at the playground. Not so long ago I had to coax her up to the slide and go down with her. Now she will usually do it on her own.
I love her hair with the static electricity from the slide.
Sophia loves the swing. Every time her grandma would try to get her out she would cry.

Katherine loves her Nana and so they played on the swings together.



Three generations - Sophia, Will and Pops.

Happy Valentines Daddy

Sam let me "sleep in" for Valentines. In our house sleeping in means that you are not the one on "Katherine duty" for the morning. When it was time for me to get up, Katherine came in to wake me up with a card and some candy. It was a sweet way to wake up.

While I was "sleeping in" Sam was making breakfast for his girls. We were treated to heart shaped pancakes.

Yummy! Katherine likes pancakes, especially with lots of syrup.
When Sam came home from work, Katherine was waiting at the door for him with a card she made and a balloon that she picked out for him.
As you can tell, we don't make a huge deal over Valentines Day though we do show appreciation for the ones we love.

Playgroup Valentine's Party

Our playgroup had a Valentine's party at Madi and Ben's house. We had lunch, did a craft and played inthe yard since the weather was so beautiful. It was a great day.

Hannah and Katherine enjoyed lunch at the small table in the sunroom.

Katherine made quite a mess of her muffin. She found Ben's play vacuum and went to work cleaning it up. Too bad the play vacuum does not actually work!

Ava in the wagon
Robert
Katherine and Hannah in the wagon

Poor Dolly has a broken foot and has to wear the head cone to stop her from chewing off her cast. At least it is cute and festive.

Random Ramblings

There have been a number of things in the past few weeks that have just baffled me that I thought I would share and get your thoughts on as well.

• Why do drive up ATM machines have the directions in braille? I hope that someone that needs braille would not be driving a car.
  
• In looking for Birthday party stuff, I am so frustrated with the commercialism of "character" themes. I did not want Barbie, Bratz, Care Bears, Elmo or any other liscensed product. Not easy to find so I made my own invitations and bought paper goods at Target in the grown up party section.
  
• In looking for Barbie items for my niece's birthday I notice that there are very few Barbies or outfits that I would consider appropriate. I was not allowed to play with Barbies as a child and have not decided what we will allow for Katherine but why does Barbie have to dress so inappropriately?

• In a similar way, have you all seen some of the clothes that they sell for toddlers? I was in JC Penney and Dillards last week. Not really places that I would think of to get "mature" clothes for my toddler. There were shirts that looked like they were from the junior department - low cut, babydoll waist, silky material. The picture I found online below is not that bad but still, very grown up looking. And there were shoes, in Katherine's size, that had a 2 inch heel! I am not very good at walking in 2 inch heels can you imagine a two year old walking in them?

How in the world will I combat the clothing issue when they sell these type of things for toddlers and when the toys they want to play with do not dress appropriately either? I do not look forward to the time when Katherine starts wanting to choose her clothes. Right now it is easy to dress her as a little girl because I buy her clothes. Each morning I pick out two choices for her so she thinks the is choosing her clothes but in reality I am still choosing them.

Remind me, when is Katherine's birthday?

I thought it was NEXT Friday, February 22. But, from the way she has been acting this week I would guess that she has already turned 2. We have had a rough week so far and it is only Tuesday. I cannot count the number of times that she has had to be disciplined.

Sunday we went to lunch after church with my parents. She had a tantrum in the Boston Market. Nana commented that she had never seen Katherine act like that before.

Yesterday she was fingerpainting with her applesauce and would not obey mommy at all. We went to get her bath ready and she left the room. When I went to get her, she had dumped her cup of lemonade all over the floor of the kitchen. I think the problems yesterday began by only taking a 45 minute nap at MDO so she was put to bed at 7:30 (about 30min to an hour early).

Today she had a great start to the day, playing with her friend Hannah, a nap and then playing with Nana. But again at dinner we had problems. I think my mistake was letting her start her meal while I was still preparing mine. I hear "uh oh, mess" and she had dumped her peaches into her ravioli only half of them ended up on the table and then her lap. Urgh! I know that toddlers have a lot of accidents, but these are not accidental messes. Again she was in bed before 8.

Sometimes I am at a total loss on how to discipline Katherine. It seems that she gets it but yet it is not effective. She can tell I am upset and she says, "mommy, very sad". If I ask her why mommy is sad, she usually understands though she seems to get stuck on why I was sad on Sunday and repeats that over and over. When I ask her what will happen if she disobeys, she states the consequence. But, that does not mean that she decides to change her behavior. I know that this is a part of being a toddler. I just was hoping that the "terrible twos" would not arrive until she actually turned two.

Sam has been working late this week and it seems he keeps calling at these disaster times. Last night he could tell I was pretty frustrated - I was actually crying. He came home and brought me an early Valentine's present - tulips - my favorite flower. What a great hubby.

There are so many things about this age that are so fun. I love that Katherine can talk and say the cutest things. She knows that her birthday is coming up. Over and over she will say things like, "Birthday party, presents, two (holding out all 5 fingers), big bed, panties". She even is starting to learn to sing Happy Birthday.

This weekend we will be celebrating Sophia's first birthday. We will have to work hard so that Katherine is not confused about the purpose of the party and who the gifts are for.

My daddy is an engineer. He is smart. We like to build towers together with my mega blocks. Usually I knock over the tower before he is finished with his materpiece. Finally I decided to help him build a very tall tower. Look, it is taller than daddy.
After we were done building the tower with every single block I have, he let me knock it down. It was so fun!

Later he built a castle out of the blocks. He can build both tall towers and creative towers. I love to build towers with my daddy. He is so much fun.