Birthday

So I have this goofy, hillarious, awesome little girl named Maddie. Maybe you've met her? She's the one that's always hiding her face in my leg whenever you're around. She just turned two! For weeks she's been singing "happy birthday to you" and having long conversations with me about her birthday party, consisting of lists of everthing she knew would be apart of the event: "Cake, and 'bloons, and grandmas, and presents..."

Then she would stop and repeat "presents?" over and over until I confirmed that, yes, Maddie, there will be presents. It was funny, I tell you, but do you think she would sing one line of "Happy Birthday to Maddie" or even look at her birthday cake when we finally sang to her for real? Nope.
In fact, she was perfectly healthy until about 3:00 on her birthday, when we started hanging streamers, at which point, and I am totally serious, she developed a fever and stopped eating any and all food or drink. She didn't take one bite of her cake, although she did consent to open her presents... Ahem. Before she went to bed, she threw up to solidify her sickness alibi.

The next morning at 6:00 freakin am she woke up chipper, with no sign of fever or illness, and ate four pieces of toast and, yes, some cake. Gotta love that stinker.

We did have lots of fun with all of Maddie's grandmas, even without her consent, and I made my first ever cake. I know that almost everyone I know can make a cuter cake, but I am particularly proud of the frosting. I made it myself and it tasted oh so yummy. MMMM... frosting.

2 Year Old in the House

I have a two year old! I can't believe this day has finally come.

We can play picnic in the playroom, or dolls, or play dough. In church today, Maddie leaned over and smashed her mouth right into my ear to whisper, "Hello Kitty, upstairs, playroom." After a full body shiver, I passed the message on to Alli.

I love to watch Maddie throw a tea party. She is so serious about it. First, you have to put the teapot under the play kitchen spout. Then you bring it back to the table and fill the cups. This is done by picking up each teacup and hanging it upside down on the spout while making a shushing noise. (Since there isn't any liquid involved, nothing spills). Then the guests arrive, and she divides up the food. "Hungly, mama," she'll say as she puts the plastic chocolate bar on her itty bitty plate.

Her vocabulary is growing every day and my favorite laugh of the day is listening to her sing "Give Said the Little Stream" before bed. "Seennin seennin all a day..." Maddie-speak is always entertaining and cute. "O-lo-me" means, "I just spilled food all over me," and "hose me" means "pick me up."

When Alli was born everything was scary and new to me. When she was a baby, she cried, and I would panic. It was like every moment was a test. "If I can't stop her crying in the next two minutes, I have failed as a human being..." She cried a lot, so there it was. I figured I was a failure.

But this so called failure has also been one of the greatest lessons in my life. You can either walk around all the time thinking you're incompetent, or you can move on. I learned from Alli that I don't have to take myself so seriously all the time. Gasp, I'm not perfect? Oh, no, other people can do things better than me? Sometimes you have to let go of it all and laugh. And then cry. Then repeat as necessary.

As I look back on Maddie's first two years of life, I can see where I've grown, and how we've all enjoyed the moments more. I don't worry myself as much. All I can say is, "Sorry, Alli." I guess someone had to break me in.

Conversations with Maddie

I came to get Maddie out of her crib the other morning, and I found her stark naked. This is the conversation we had:

"Where are your pajamas Maddie?"

"Jammas, OFF"

"Did you take them off?"

"yeah"

"Maddie, you need to wear your pajamas so you don't get cold."

"I'm freezin" (Brr motions and gritted teeth)

"Tomorrow, can you wear your pajamas all night long?"

"No- jammas -ON!"

I actually already knew that her pajamas were off. She took them off before she fell asleep the night before and the night before that... What am I going to do with this kid?

Ball Pit Bubble Bath

I've known this day was coming for a year now. Anyone who has ever put one foot inside a Chucky Cheese's is aware of the problem. It's the balls. They stink. So when I hauled that $20 dollar clearance Easy Peasy ball pit up to the check out at Target last year, I thought, "This is an awesome deal, but some day I might regret this." That day was today.

My ball pit wouldn't stink. Not in my house. After all, my kids bathe and change socks every day, so why would that McDonald's Play Land mustiness invade my ball pit? I don't know, but it's happened. You know how you can smell everything just after you shower? Well, I had just taken a shower this morning when I was nearly knocked down by the smell in my living room.

I immediately decided to give the balls a bubble bath in my jetted tub. I figured the jets would work kind of like the swishing of the washing machine. I cannot even express how much fun this was. If laundry was like rolling brightly colored balls in mounds of bubbles, I'd do it every day and not complain.

Rinsing off the bubbles wasn't so fun, though, and I realized that a Clorox bath would have been more practical (but certainly not as fun).

Lauren, my friend, it's been ten years. Whenever I think of high school, I think of your smile and your pink lipstick. Always glamorous, even at the beach. We had some fun times together then. Now I hardly recognize you. I wish I had known that you were so sad. I wish I had been a real friend to you.

A real friend would have told you that God had a plan for you and that he loved you individually. A real friend wouldn't have kept everything I know about God and heaven and life to myself. I wish you were here again so I could tell you that we come to this earth to get a body so we can learn about happiness. I remember a time when you were happy, and someday I think you'll see that it was always there all around you. I let you down, mistakenly thinking that you were living your life your way and I was living mine and that you would find your own happiness in life. Now you are gone, and I am very very sorry, for whatever that is worth.

May God Bless you and take away your pain.

The Case of the Missing Jewels

I can't believe Alli is five years old! School is coming: riding the bus, school lunch, and "after school time" are all a few months shy of this moment in time. I have this irrational fear that the age of innocence is ending as well, and all the quiet, controlled mom time we've spent together will be dashed on the rocks of the real world in a tidal wave of "Santa's not real" and "the boys at school told me all about where babies come from, mom." Maybe I'm ready to home-school. Oh, wait. I have no patience for kids.

I suppose Kindergarten will come, no matter what, and it will be a great experience, despite all my fretting. In the meantime, I am trying to savor every "play with me now, mom," and "I'm hungry. Get me some milk, too." Soon her constant energy will be channelled elsewhere, and maybe that will be a good thing for both of us. After all, I can't be her sole source of excitement forever. There's a whole big world out there for her, and she's ready to take it on. There, now I've gone and made myself cry.

So anyway, the point is that we had a great big Alli-pa-looza this past weekend to celebrate her five year old coming of age. It was a Nancy Drew Detective Party, which Alli decided on two months ago. Let me just say that I have a thing for matching everything, and there isn't a single Nancy Drew party item for sale anywhere in the world. I looked. Hard.

So we improvised, and the result was a lot of fun. First Johnny Jewel thief made an appearance and our detectives in training got fingerprinted and donned name badges and "evidence bags" before heading down to the basement to recover the lost jewels, aka craft rhinestones, that were hidden all over the floor. They absolutely loved this, which surprised me a little. After all, I did search high and low on the Internet for mystery games, but all of them required reading skills. When I came up with "let's scatter sparkly stuff all over the floor and let them pick it up," I didn't intuitively know it was a winner.

Next we went on a good old fashioned scavenger hunt using the compass, magnifying glass, and binoculars that I put in the party favor bags. At the end of the hunt they found the party favor "detective paraphernalia," and I pronounced them detectives for real.

My friend Konnie, who is even more amazing than I thought, made a magnifying glass cake for me. Those cake decorating classes came in handy, although I think it takes more than a class to create a cake artist. It was even better than I expected, which is a huge improvement on the last birthday cake I bought from Smith's which was much worse than I expected... I'm lucky to have so many talented friends. Thanks Konnie.

Now the party planner in me can go on vacation for another blissful 11 months.