Birthday Birthday Birthday Party!

April is quite the birthday month in our family. There's at least five within a week of each other. This year, Elle turned five on a Thursday-not that significant, expect that Emma is in school that day as well. And it just so happened to be Muffins with Mom that morning. So, not only was it Elle's birthday, but Christine and I were able to go have breakfast with them. And, she had a cookie cake for snack, AND we were going to Chuckie Cheese! Talk about an All-Start fifth birthday! Christine had to get her wisdom teeth out after breakfast, so she couldn't make Chuckie Cheese. So, Grandmommy, Jen, Luke and the girls headed over after school. The girls-and Jen-had a BLAST! They were from one ride to the next and Emma loved riding this big horse ride. I think she rode it 6 times. We did manage to get them to stop long enough to scarf down two slices of pizza and some fruit juice before they were gone again. Two hours later, we were able to bribe them outside by promising a slice of cookie cake and Luke was loving it! He couldn't get enough of it and had a green face to prove it.
Friday afternoon, Emma headed over to Christine's for a slumber party!! She was looking forward to sleeping in Elle's bunk beds and making Princess and the Frog cupcakes. Saturday was Cindy's surprise birthday party and Matt was feeling up for the party, so we all headed out to their house. Cindy was VERY surprised to see everyone at her house waiting to celebrate with her. Emma was loving playing with Marley and they ran around the whole night. There were disposable cameras people were to use to take pictures and they held two of them all night. Marley did manage to take a few pictures, but Emma had the camera backwards and if she had taken a photo, she would've blinded herself with a flash.
I swear Luke has a wooden leg. We arrived at their house around 5 and he had 6 ounces of milk, a little bit later he had an entire hot dog and cupcake, another 5 ounces of milk and before we left (around 9:30) he had 5 more ounces of milk. And that was only while we were at the party! He sees food and just needs to eat it-ha.
Sunday was Elle's birthday party and we went to see Arietteye at Market Place theater. After the movie, we had "dinner" reservations at 4 at a Japanese restaurant. We had some time to kill, so we went to the dollar store and the girls were going crazy picking out all kinds of random things they wanted. Christine and I finally realized we had to get out of there, fast! Dad, Lisa, Brooke and Sandy were able to come eat with us and we all had a good time. The fire was a big hit and they did a great job at making Elle feel special on her birthday. Once again, Luke scarfed down 10 ounces, a plate full of noodles, rice and bananas. He even managed to attack a cupcake when we weren't looking. Emma is not much of a fan of rice or Japanese food, so she had a ridiculously blue smurf drink and then a pb&j when we got home.

Happy Easter!

We seem to get super excited when it's our child's first holidays-Christmas, Halloween, Birthday. I'm finding out, though, that while the first ones are fun because they are new, the real fun starts when they get old enough to somewhat understand and they get excited about holidays. We started talking up the Easter Bunny and Egg Hunts with Emma a few weeks before Easter. She had fun having egg hunts around our house and was SUPER excited about going to an egg hunt with Elle. We had been planning on taking them to the Lillie's Friends egg hunt for awhile and Elle came over Friday night for a sleepover. When we got up Saturday morning, it was cold and rainy!! So we took our time getting ready and out the door. We got to the ballpark around 10:15 and the sun decided to come on out! The egg hunt was more like an egg dash and you had about 30 seconds to stuff your bag with eggs. Emma was DYING to get in there and grab the eggs, but had to wait a little bit. When they said go, she kinda freaked out and didn't want to do it. I had to start shoveling eggs in her bag and she just stood and watched. Elle was up next and she didn't want to go either! I started shoveling eggs in hers too, and then Emma realized it was pretty fun and started scooping up some eggs. There was a place to get face paint and Emma usually shys away from stuff on her face, but she hopped right up in the chair and asked for a fairy princess. They had a great time playing in the bounce houses and Emma said later she wanted to go back to the fair-ha!
We were at brunch the next day and out of nowhere, Emma says she didn't believe in the Easter Bunny. Of course we started (silently) freaking out about that and tried to distract her from that thought.Even after about 20 minutes of hopeful convincing she was still saying there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny. She did say that Santa Claus brought the eggs-so at least we still had that! We have an Elf on the Shelf and we got an email from Santa saying there was an Easter Egg going on with all the elves and I think that's what helped convince her the Easter Bunny was, in fact, real.
Easter morning, we got up and Emma was excited to see that the Easter Bunny had come and there were eggs all over the house. She started running around grabbing all the eggs and shaking them to find out if there were candies in them. After checking out all her loot, we got ready and headed up to King for church and lunch. After we finished stuffing our faces, we were headed to Grandmommy's for round two! We got there just as everyone was eating; and we were all a little too full for food, but I managed to scarf down three Dewey's cake squares! We headed home around 8 and we all slept great that night!

Growin' Babies

I remember growing up and hearing "old people" always saying how big my siblings and I were getting and how fast we were growing up. Little did they know, but I was NOT growing up fast, in fact, life was just creeping by. And I most certainly did not like being told how "big" I was when I was 14. Now, it seems it is more like little did I know. Time passes so fast, sometimes I can't believe just how fast it can go. I also remember when I was 10, 12, heck even 20, and thinking 29 is SO OLD!!! Being 29, and dreaming about 29, is two totally different worlds entirely. Twenty nine is not, in fact, old anymore. Instead, 29 is almost like the cusp of my adulthood. Although, I am married with two kids, I still feel like we are just now establishing ourselves as adults. Matt has a great job, which has made me fortunate enough to be home with our children. We have a house, own two cars, life insurance, a will and a bunch of other "adult" things. Despite all that being said, having children allows you to relive all the great things we miss from our childhood. We can pass down the toys and games we loved to the next generation. We get to spend hours on the baseball fields again and have dance parties in our living rooms. I know that it's not possible; but I wish, somehow, we could help our kids enjoy and cherish every minute of their childhoods instead of wishing to be a little bit bigger.

All that being said, our little princess is....POTTY TRAINED!!! And let me tell you what, I do not miss buying all those extra diapers! It all started the day after Luke's birthday (Friday the 16th). She went to bed the night before in a diaper that was way too big and scratchy. She woke up that morning and needed a diaper change, we were out of diapers (hence the big and scratchy one) and she had to put one of the "yucky" diapers on. She literally burst into tears as I was putting it on her. I reassured her we would be getting Elmo ones really soon. I got a bottle ready for Luke and we were in the bonus room when, all of a sudden, Emma yells out she needs to go potty! She hasn't said that since...well, it's been a long time. So of course I jumped out of the chair, scooped up Emma and we raced down the stairs. I was more than half expecting nothing to happen, but all of a sudden-pee pee! I (we) was so excited and gave Emma a huge hug and started squealing how great she did. Immediately, she said "Now I get to wear big girl panties!!" Ummmm, that wasn't quite how it was going to work, but I didn't have the heart to tell her. She ended up wearing them to the grocery store, the mall, Dewey's and home without any accidents. Wheeew! I wasn't getting my hopes up though, and it's a good thing I didn't. She pooped in them a little later and was MORTIFIED!! She did NOT want to put panties or pull-ups on. She insisted on a diaper. I tried reassuring her it was ok and she could put on a diaper if she needed to poop. It's been a little over two weeks and she is doing great! I almost forget to ask her about needing to go anymore-she will poop and pee in the potty. She just won't wear panties. I think she is going to be more willing to once its summer and she doesn't wear a swim diaper at the pool. I am not complaining at all though! And we still treat the pull-ups like panties and she rarely goes in them.
Luke had his one year check up on his birthday and he is doing great. He weighs 18 pounds and is 29 inches long. Emma was only 15 pounds and 29 inches when she was a year old! We are done with formula (!!!!) and now dealing with getting him off the bottle and using the sippy cup-he HATES them! He likes his bottle and gets aggravated with those cups! Eventually he'll get it, we hope :o)