Marshmallows, Washable Markers, & 51 Candles

This week has kind of been a blur.

On Monday, Rylee and I did another letter project. Originally it was going to be a "Mountain M", but then I realized that one of the girls' very favorite treats starts with M, so

M is for Marshmallow: My ongoing project has been trying to get our house clean and organized. The boxes that Rylee's bed came in were sitting in our entry way for a few days waiting for trash day when I realized that they could be put to good use:

(I've decided that a carboard house should be a permanent fixture in our home...it's a way to keep the girls happily confined to a corner of the room instead of tearing everything around the house apart!)

Cailyn is starting to play and act more like a toddler than a baby lately. She can stand up without holding on to anything when she wants to and figured out how to climb up onto the little rocking chair, stand holding onto the back and rock. A few days ago, she crawled around the corner carrying a blue plastic snake saying "sssssssss...ssssssssssssss...ssssss..." Her vocabulary is rapidly expanding; a few of her favorite words are book, shoe, sock, drink, bath, dog, Mo, Elmo (which she pronounces exactly the same as she says Mo - "Bo!"), baby, phone...and of course, MaMa and DaDa, and I think she even said Rylee today! These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I know there are many others.

Anyway, here she is playing hide and seek with Rylee.

She is a good eater. Always messy...

...although sometimes messier than others!

Cailyn also colored for the first time this week and loved it!

We also finished off birthday week this week. Quinn turned 28 on Monday, although we had to celebrate over the phone and by sending him a package (Rylee recorded a message on a card that sings "Twinkle Twinkle", painted a picture, and helped me make blonde brownies to mail him) this year.

On Thursday (my birthday) we had a girls' night birthday party for my 27th and Katie's 24th birthdays (hers is the day after mine.) I made Cafe Rio style salads and Katie brought chocolate fondue and we stuffed ourselves silly.

I also realized that it had been a while since I'd actually blown out as many candles as I was years old, so even though we were having fondue, I got two mini cakes from our favorite Dippidee and we lit 51 candles (27 on mine and 24 on Katie's).

Here's our little party group: Emilie, me, Megan, Katie and Hannah...none of us look very cute, but we had fun anyway!

(We had to cut off the top layer of frosting because there was so much wax on the cake by the time we lit the candles, took pictures and sang!)

The kids were upstairs playing while we did cake, but when they came down to have cake, Rylee had us stick a candle in her slice of cake and sing to her about 7 times...I really don't think I've ever seen her happier than when people are singing happy birthday to her!

This is my birthday kiss from her.

And this is her rendition of singing Happy Birthday to me:

My Project This Weekend

We finally got Rylee out of the guest room and into her own bed in the same room with Cailyn! I still have some sorting and organizing of toys and clothes to do, but I got the bulk of it done. So this is what it looks like when you walk into their room now: I made these letters for Rylee about two years ago, but they've never been up on the wall in this house...mostly because I've never had things set up the way I wanted them.
Since I was putting everything together, I finally got around to making these letters for Cailyn. I was really excited about how they turned out! And here's some pics a little closer up so you can see some of the detail better...

I don't craft very often but I sure do enjoy it when I actually take the time to do it!

Three Years

Rylee had her 3-year-old doctor visit yesterday afternoon. As I was filling out the development questionnaire, I realized that she really is pretty advanced for her age. I mean, I've always known that she's smart, but I was just surprised at a lot of the milestones that were listed because it seemed like she had been doing most of them for a long time.

For instance: Does your child string 3-4 words together to form a sentence?

It asked me to list an example, and I wrote: "You be nice to my sister, she a good girl!"

Along these same lines, I went to get my hair cut this week. My hair dresser is one of Rylee's nursery leaders. She told me that in one of her recent lessons, she held up a picture of a bull and asked the kids if they knew what it was. Rylee (who was the only one to respond) promptly piped up "That a Yak!" We laughed about this, and then I admitted that it was Sesame Street, not me, that deserved the credit for her knowing what a Yak was.

Anyway, here are here measurements, although they are wrong...they weighed her fully clothed, including a jacket, so I'm sure that she's at least a pound lighter, and when you're less than 30 pounds, I'm pretty sure 1 pound will skew the percentiles pretty good. Oh well.

So, fully clothed...

Weight: 29 lbs. 12 oz (41%ile)

Height: 35.24 inches (13%ile)

(and this is where it gets REALLY inaccurate...they measured her height WITHOUT shoes, even though they took her weight fully clothed...)

BMI: 16.84 (79%ile)

I can guarantee that if measurements were accurate, she would have been well below the 50%ile for BMI, and probably below the 30%ile for weight. I mean, she still fits into 18-24 month/2T clothes!

Just to satisfy my curiosity (because I am interested in details like this) I almost asked them to reweigh her after her check-up (when she had stripped down to her underwear), but I restrained myself.

Wonderful Dreams

Rylee: Mommy, did you have a wonderful dream?
Me: Yes, I did have a wonderful dream. Did you?
Rylee: No, I'm too little to have a wonderful dream.
Me: No you're not! You can have a wonderful dream, too Rylee!
Rylee: No I too little. I have a dream a monster try to eat me. He run and get me in my dream yesterday.

Pixie Dust

First the invitations were mailed out... ...then the cake was made...
(the mushrooms were Rylee's special request)

...then the friends came!

Rylee's third birthday party was on Saturday; in case you hadn't already figured it out, it was a Tinkerbell party.

When the guests arrived, they got a set of wings (made from wire hangers and knee-his) and chose from 5 different colors of fairy skirts.Next, they got Pixie Dusted (with sparkly lip gloss, sparkly nail polish, and sparkly powder in blush type brushes).

They gathered balloons

and got their faces painted.

(Unless you happened to be a boy...then you got a vest with wings and skipped the sparkles and went straight for the face painting...

...unless, of course, you preferred not to dress up at all and opted to just drink juice!)

Once the fairies were ready, they made - what else - wands!

While all this was going on, our youngest fairies played on the floor...

In between wands and food, the fairies colored.

Our next door neighbor fairies displaying the whole package!

Then it was time for cake.

Tinkerylee was all smiles when the chorus of fairies sang her "Happy Birthday!"

Behold, the fairy cake feast.

Then, of course, came presents and playing with presents. (This is the tea set that Rylee has carried everywhere ever since.I have enjoyed lots of hot chocolate, cake, and other such imaginary food prepared especially by Rylee.)

Cailyn and Brooke joined right in and played, too.

Aunt Melinda showed up after cleaning out her old things with a bag full of ponies and passed them out to all the little girls as they went home. I think McKenna was the MOST excited of anyone about her pony!

After the party, Tinkerylee gave her daddy big hugs; he left shortly after to work in California.

The end.

Oh, wait, almost.

Here are the after-party hair-dos.
Rylee: some of her shorter hair in the back came lose

Cailyn: some of her avocado came lose from her hand and got stuck in her shorter hair in the back!