Happy Birthday to Daddy! We should have taken a family photo at Robby’s 40th birthday party, but I always seem to think of these things after the moment has passed. Instead, we offer a photo of Robby and Julia sharing a joyful moment of play.

Robby enjoyed his birthday and birthday party a lot. We celebrated the night before with friends and then on his birthday with a family meal. I hope I will be as graceful when I move on to my next decade.

We love you, old man!

“Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” — Jack Benny

Wow! We now have a four-year old. There were some days in that first month of her life that I couldn’t imagine how we were going to make it to one month old, and here we are at four years already. Emily has loved this birthday. We have counted down to the day, and if you asked her what she was going to do on Saturday, she would show her sheepish grin and say “it’s my birthday”. When I asked her what she wanted for a cake, she told me she wanted blue icing. The cake flavor didn’t seem to matter as long as icing was blue. While she watched me ice her cupcakes blue, she thanked me and told me how wonderful it was.

Some of our four-year old uniquenesses are:
-Tons of pretend play! Her favorites are doctor requiring lots of measuring, take a trip requiring lots of packing, and of course Cinderella.
– Is pretty interested these days in counting and reciting her ABC’s on her own.
– Loves her sister. She hugs and kisses her more than Julia would like. Emily doesn’t stop when Julia squeals for her to.
– Still has her favorite blanket that she calls “baby mouse”.
– Uses the words Mom, Mother, Dad, and Father instead of Mommy and Daddy.
– Tells her mother “yeah, yeah, yeah” as an answer to questions that she doesn’t want to answer.
– Prefers anything that has a princess on it.
– When singing songs if she doesn’t know the words she just makes them up.
– Favorite move – Cinderella
– Favorite drink – Chocolate Milk
– Favorite thing to wear are dresses.
– Favorite shoes are a simple dress shoe that she calls her “dancing shoes”. We have one in white and one in black.

Happy Birthday Julia!

By far our favorite thing to do today was to sing Happy Birthday to you. Your face brightened and glowed with joy each time. You really understood that you were special and that we were singing about you. My other favorite thing from the day was our 1:30 am cuddle that we shared, just because we could.

For Julia’s 2nd birthday we celebrated with a playdate at the pumpkin patch. Every year we go to the pumpkin patch for a playdate and it made for a fun place to celebrate a party too. All the kids dressed as pumpking fairies while we looked for pumpkins, fed sheep (and a llama), walked through a corn maze, and ate snacks and lunch. Julia had a blast! Her grin was huge and adorable as she knew we were singing Happy Birthday to her. The weather was warm and sunny and added a lot to our fun day.

All the little fairies were sweet and seemed to enjoy the day! Thanks fairies for sharing the day with us!

A Silly Pool Face!

Emily celebrated her birthday with her friends at a pool playdate. We had to move the playdate twice because of sickness, but finally everyone was well and we got to go. Julia, Elena, Maeve, Aiden, and New Fish all came for the play time. The pool water seemed a little colder this week, but Emily had a good time anyway. She played a funny game – she will swim to the middle of the pool with her floaties on and cry, “help, help me Mommy”. I would walk out to her and pull her back to the shallow section. She never was in trouble and in need of help, she just wanted her Mommy to play with her and figured this way would work.

After swimming, we all went to Chick-fil-a for lunch and a cookie cake. Emily loves her chicken and fries (with catsup of course). The kids all had a good time. To cap off the good playtime, Emily played in the playarea and successfully climbed up to the top of the playground toy by herself.

Emily and Elena are in a Mother’s Day Out program together, so we couldn’t pass the opportunity to share a little birthday party. Ashley made the cupcakes and I brought pinwheels and candles. Emily seemed pleased to eat her cake with her class and was happy in a quiet shy way. It was sweet for her Mommy to share this party with her.