Weekend Wrap-Up: The Fourth Birthday Extravaganza Edition

Wow!  What a weekend!  The past couple of days have been all about Callie Joy.  I think it was a little overwhelming for all of us, but we also had a wonderful time celebrating her 4th birthday.

So get ready for some fun birthday festivity pictures!

Saturday

We decided to take Callie to her first ever movie in a theater- Frozen.  It was quite the experience.  We almost didn't make it because a certain child who shall remain nameless has a ridiculous fear of automatic flushing toilets and refused to go potty before the movie.  Ultimately we didn't make her go, and she did fine.  The movie itself was good but a little scarier than we were anticipating.  She handled it well, though, and seemed to enjoy it (despite how her face looks in these pictures).  And she had her book there to refer to if she had any questions.

Then it was time to get ready for the PUZZLE PARTY!  I got all the puzzle things set up on the table.

 

Treat bags, cupcakes with puzzle pieces decorated by the birthday girl, and a
homemade birthday puzzle.



The guests started arriving around 4:00.  (Lesson learned for next year- have a morning party.  By 5:00 many of the kids started to lose it).  We had a house full of all stages of baby/toddler/preschool/elemenatryhood.  The list of guests and their ages are as follows, starting with the youngest:

Maya- (almost) 5 months
Frederic- 10 months
Kylie- 1 year
Mabel- 1 year
Stella- 1 year
Donald- 2 years
Sydney- 3 years
Charlie- 3 years
Callie- 4 years
Maddox- 7 years

We spent time in the basement playing with puzzles (and all the other toys, of course).  Then we moved to the kitchen for puzzle piece ornament decorating.

Hopefully the babies didn't feel too left out of the craft time.  They got to play with some toys together.  Maya wasn't too excited about the party hat, though.

Maya and Frederic

We then had dinner where all of us were standing/sitting/trying to wrangle the children and eat as best as we could.

It was a little bit chaotic.

After dinner was, of course, cupcakes! Callie didn't want us to sing, but she did blow out the candles (hesitantly...she was not too happy with all the attention on her). 

Stella was particularly excited about the cupcake.

We attempted to get all 10 kids together for a picture.  The results were...to be expected:

Finally, Callie opened her presents.  Where else, but under the kitchen table?

Once again, she didn't want too much attention.  But the kids had fun hanging out
under the table.

Phew.  Two hours flew by, kids started melting down, and everyone was gone by about 6:40.  I promptly left Chris to handle bedtime so I could do a ride-along with Dan for a few hours.  It was a slow night, but I got to see him pull a couple people over and saw some guys getting frisked, etc.  It was fun to see some of what goes on in a cop car.

Waiting in the car while Dan was getting things ready to go.

Sunday

The big birthday!  We played at home in the morning and she opened her presents from us.

Coo-Koo (our Elf on the Shelf) even got her a present!

The big part of our day was a family birthday party at Boom and Bops' house.  Both sides of the family were there to celebrate our girl.  It was such a fun time, but I did a terrible job of taking pictures.  Thankfully Bops took some, but I still didn't get pictures of everyone that was there.

We got some of our little family unit.

And of the cupcakes and Callie having some sort of freak out at lunch.

No singing again, just awkward silence while she blew out her candle.

And then there was the present opening- this time under the piano.

After the family party we headed over to the Wicks' to hang out with college friends.  Callie played with the girls and Maya showed off her big cheeks.

We ended the day with dinner at her favorite place- Bruegger's!  She had about had it with me taking pictures of her, but I had to catch a quick shot of her and her daddy.

All in all, she had an awesome couple of days and got some awesome gifts.  Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us- both yesterday and today.  We are very lucky to have such amazing friends and family members. 

Now, bring on Christmas!

4-Years-Old!!!

I don't know how it happened, but in a blink of an eye our baby is FOUR YEARS OLD.

Seriously, how is that possible?  Wasn't she just a baby-oneyearold-twoyearold-threeyearold like yesterday?

She seems surprised by it too.  When I told her she was FINALLY officially 4 today, she looked herself up and down and said, "I AM? I don't FEEL like I'm 4!"

So it may take awhile for all of us to adjust, but I am so looking forward to 4.  She astounds us every day by how smart and amazing she is.  She is sweet and stubborn and everything in between, and we just really love our hilariously-maddeningly-adorable newly 4-year-old.

Favorite-Things-Phone-Dump Friday

It. Is. Christmas. Break.

OMG.  So happy.

This week seemed very long...and I didn't take too many pictures.

As for the girls this week- Maya learned how to go to sleep in her bed by 7pm (yay!) and Callie learned to poop out shapes.

My first favorite of the week is the girls giggling together.  It is so fun to see how they can make each other smile and laugh like no one else can.


IMG 8777 from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

Favorite Thing #2:
I got to spend Monday morning with Callie at preschool
because they celebrated her birthday that day.  She was star of the day, brought
some things for show and tell, and line leader.  It was so fun to see her in that
environment!

Favorite Thing #3:
Pictures from Boom, G-ma and G-pa throughout the week.

Favorite Thing #4:
Girls Night.  We had a girls' p.j., popcorn and movie party on Wednesday and
now she asks for a girl party every night.  I think it is because she loves popcorn.

Tomorrow the birthday/holiday craziness starts.  We are having a puzzle-themed friend birthday party for Callie tomorrow afternoon!  I've been busy working on the treat bags and crafts that we are going to do.

But working on the fun crafty stuff, I have stealthily avoided the bigger task that needs to be done- CLEANING.  We have the next 20 hours to make our house look respectable.  So off I go...

TBT

Happy Thursday! 

Our first throwbacks are of Boom and Uncle Dan.

Then a couple of the babies just hanging around- hands in mouth ALL THE TIME, and tummy time on the floor.

Poop Shapes QOTD

Disclaimer: You can probably see from the title that this post is going to be about poop.  If that is not for you, come back another day. 

So it is no secret that potty training Callie has been H-E-doublehockeysticks.

We're STILL in the figuring out pooping phase...16 months after starting the process. 

She has definitely made some progress- she doesn't freak out or scream when she has to poop any more.  She doesn't really refuse to go on the potty much either.  But she still does, what we call, pooping in her butt (which I realize doesn't make much sense) that requires a change of underwear or two a day.  I won't go into details, just know that she goes through lots of undies in a week.

Anyway...a princess-related-poop miracle happened yesterday that MAYBE will help us turn the corner into full blown poop-in-the-potty awesomeness.

She was on the potty yesterday, and pooped.

Callie: MOMMY!  I POOPED OUT A TIARA!!!!! COME SEE!!!!!!

And sure enough, her little poop was shaped EXACTLY like a princess tiara.  I'm not kidding.  I thought about taking a picture to show you all, but figured that you'd probably rather I didn't.

So now she thinks that pooping is like a game- WHAT SHAPE WILL COME OUT NEXT???

So far she's pooped out a mitten, a pumpkin, and even a tea pot. 

But apparently sometimes it is not a shape.  I asked her today if she pooped at preschool, and she said yes.  I asked what shape, and she replied, "It wasn't a shape, it was just a poop."

Before you are a parent, you never imagine that you'd ever find yourself in a situation where you are asking someone what shape their poop is.

Parenting is awesome.  And a little gross.

Weekend Wrap-Up: The 2nd Christmas Program Edition

Get ready for a JAM PACKED wrap-up.  We were busy!

I'm sure after my post about the first Christmas program yesterday, you're all dying to know how Christmas Program #2 went, so I'll go backwards and start with today.  Haha.

Since Chris is a Sunday School teacher, he was with Callie during this program.  I think that made a big difference. 

We had fun waiting for it to begin.

Babies make everything more fun!  Unless they are crabby.

It started out with all the kids walking up the aisle and getting up onto the risers.  We saw Callie go up and stand in the last row of the risers, but as soon after she was up on the stage, she disappeared and I got a text from Chris that said "Major freakout."

Uh-oh.  It didn't look like this one was going to go any better than the last one.

But it turned out okay.

The kids did a lot of standing up and sitting down.  Every once in awhile we would see Callie's head peek out.  She eventually sang a teeny tiny bit on "Go Tell It On the Mountain," but mostly she was just looking around.



Joy to the world from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

Jenna was also up there with the kids, and she sent me this picture halfway through.

Callie and Charlie- So adorable.

So we may not have many pictures of her smiling (thanks for the pictures again, Bops!), but she wasn't looking super mad either.  She did it and I'm so proud of her.  It is not easy to get up in front of all those people. 

After the program they got to have some treats, and we had to get a picture of her and Charlie in their wisemen crowns.

We spent the afternoon with the Held's at Edinborough, since all of the children seemed to have some energy to spare.  We all had a blast playing in the big playground maze and gym.

After we got home from that we baked and decorated cookies!

Pink frosting, of course

While we were waiting for the cookies to bake, I asked Callie to sing a couple of the Christmas Program songs for me, and she actually obliged.  So here they are, for your enjoyment.



Little Gray Donkey from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

We also had playtime on the bed (well, Daddy was napping).  The first game we played was "The Jesus Game."  Callie was Mary, Chris was (a sleeping) Joseph, Maya was Baby Jesus and I was a shepherd.  But then Callie took her tights off and put them on Maya's head, and deemed her a shepherd.

She definitely looks like she could keep sheep under control.

There was also a big sister take down after she wanted to hold the baby.

And since so many of my pictures and videos revolved around Callie today, I couldn't leave Maya out.

IMG 8709 from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

And that was all just today.  Whew.

Yesterday we hung out at G-ma and G-pa's house and G-ma, Auntie Cat, Maya and I went to a baby shower for Chris' cousin.

While Chris hung out with a friend, I spent an exhilarating night folding a ridiculous pile of laundry that had been piled up for who knows how long.  I have no idea how adding one baby to the family makes the laundry loads seem to quadruple in size.

I bet you're jealous of my big Saturday night plans.

And as I mentioned on Friday, we had a get-together with my dad's whole side of the family.  My Aunt Mary sent some of the pictures she took that night.  We tried to get a family picture with my grandma, but it was kind of a disaster.

But the big family picture turned out great (except we were missing Mari's boyfriend Josh).



All the Hendersons

Wow, so that was a lot of stuff right there in one little weekend.  There is one more week left of school before winter break.  And we have ONE MORE WEEK with a 3-year-old.  Crazy.

Christmas Program #1

Callie had her preschool Christmas program on Thursday night.

She got to wear her new pretty Christmas dress and looked adorable.

She seemed really excited. 

We got there and dropped her off with her teacher and found our seats, anxiously awaiting the adorable children- especially ours- singing Christmas songs.

A crowd of family came to see the show.

The kids all walked out and got settled on the risers and were indeed adorable, if not a little nervous.

And then the singing started.

And Callie didn't sing.  I figured that maybe she just needed some time to warm up.

But there was still no singing.  She just looked sad.

And then, about halfway through, she just started looking PISSED.  So there was no need to continue to take pictures.

And then after that, she started putting the plastic princess ring (that we mistakenly let her wear) in her mouth.  So Auntie Cat and I spent the last 5 minutes of the concert willing her not to choke on it.  Lesson learned- no more princess rings.

I had high hopes of taking all these adorable videos to post for you all.  I got this one.  It is from far back and it is hard to see, but Callie is directly behind the kid in the middle of the front row with the plaid shirt on. You can't really see her very well because she is looking down, not singing, with an angry look on her face.


Christmas Show from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

After the show we had Christmas cookies and she was a little overwhelmed by the whole experience.  She managed to smile once for Bops (who took all the pictures), but then started to lose it pretty quickly.

So...maybe we'll get some smiling pictures and a cute video next year.  Or hopefully tomorrow.  She has her Sunday School Christmas Program in the morning.  Stay tuned...