Our Little Baby Blog

Three Years!

Friday morning Anna turned three. As is our usual tradition, we decorated her doorway and her chair with streamers. I love the idea of waking up to a celebration, though Anna was a little overwhelmed by it and requested that I remove all the "vines" from her door. Aunt Pam showed her that she could run through them, which did change Anna's perspective a bit; but she still preferred to have them removed. Ah well... next year?

We were lucky to have a lot of family in town for Anna's birthday and Abe's baptism. We packed a lot into the weekend, starting with a blueberry pancake breakfast. No surprise there, Anna was super excited for her favorite meal and even poked around on my plate for the pieces that contained blueberries. That kid is a scavenger.


After opening gifts, we all got dressed to head out to the Field Museum. Anna's really into dinosaurs lately and Mike thought it would be great to show her the dinos. Aunt Meagan made Anna some really cute hair clips with flowers and I put one in her hair before we left the house. It looked so cute!

The museum was fun, but a little overwhelming because it's such a big place. I honestly think they should allow families with small children to just run around the lobby for free. However, we all enjoyed seeing the dinosaurs and made it pretty much through that portion of the museum before Abe started getting hungry and restless. You really have to watch Abe's hunger or face dealing with a major meltdown. He was pretty patient with us, but the poor guy just doesn't like to sit still in a stroller.


When we got home, we took advantage of the weather and headed outside to play with Anna's birthday present from Grandma and Papa - a new playhouse! Awesome!! Anna was so excited about the gift. She did not want to leave that thing - and who can blame her. It's got a little seat inside, a working doorbell and a phone! Talk about high tech.

We put a big quilt down on the deck and let Abe crawl around out there. Anna was so protective of her gift, she kept asking me to please move him so he didn't touch her playhouse. That's a regular request around here. Please move him, please put him down, please don't let him touch things. Oh, big sister, you have a lifetime of hurt ahead of you. This kid is going to touch all of it soon.

Of course, Abe army crawled across the quilt in no time and kept reaching up toward the door, practically begging her with his eyes and grunts to let him in. Poor guy.


On Saturday we held Anna's birthday party. I had fun setting up for this. I ordered a bunch of cool brightly colored streamers for the walls from Pearl River. Love that place. And, upon request, I made a strawberry cake from scratch. Anna's obsessed with strawberry lately. She wanted a strawberry cake and strawberry ice cream. Done and done.

It really turned out great. I made cream cheese frosting and put both icing and some strawberry puree in between the layers. Yum.




By the time everyone left, we were all exhausted. It was great fun though. She had several playmates come over and loved running around with them. Unfortunately, they had to play inside because we had a freakish change in weather. Friday was in the 60s and Saturday had a high in the 30s. Ridiculous.

Her birthday parties have been with the same crowd of families since she turned one year and so it's neat to see how the kids have all changed. We're very blessed to have a great group of friends and I hope we all remain close as folks move.

All in all, the weekend was a tremendous success. I'm still in shock that Anna is now three. My baby. Where does the time go?