Rose's 5th Birthday

Rose turned five on the 19th and asked for a "rainbow unicorn" birthday cake.  We did a little birthday party at home (more like a glorified play date with cake and presents) in between preschool and ice skating lessons that day.  

It was actually kind of perfect.  We just asked the guests to wear their favorite dress-up, then played musical chairs, then the kids went off to the play room.  I was glad I hadn't planned any other games or crafts or anything because really, all they wanted to do was play.  

Rose got some very nice presents although I think the one she has enjoyed most of all is the Elena nightgown that Tabby sent her.  

I took Rose out to lunch at her favorite place (Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shop) after her Tap/Ballet combo dance class.  Then I got to work at preschool with her. 

When I asked Rose what she wanted to take to preschool for snack on her birthday, she immediately said that she wanted fruit salad with marshmallows.  I tried to talk her into cupcakes, but she was adamant that we do fruit salad instead, so that's what we did.  

Rose at 5 years old:

• Loves ice skating, dress-ups, reading books (especially the Mercy Watson and Princess in Black series), dance, gymnastics, and anything pretend.
• Is obsessed with princesses (especially Elena of Avalor), jewelry, make-up, and basically anything fancy or girly.  Whenever she notices me wearing lipstick, she comes begging for a kiss, hoping to steal some right off my lips for herself.  She also likes to pick out earrings for me to wear and then won't let me put them in myself, choosing to do it for me instead (which causes me no small amount of anxiety).
• Rose freaks out about spiders and even the tiniest scrape or hangnail, wailing until a band-aid is applied, which is the only thing that gives her any consolation.  
• She is still our social butterfly and makes friends easily.  But she is also boy-crazy and is constantly informing us about all her various boyfriends and who she plans to kiss or marry.  It's been cute, but it's also worrying us for what she will be like as a teenager.  ;) 
• Loves anything chocolate.
• Gives the sweetest snuggles and hugs.  She still loves to be held and climbs onto my lap almost every morning, just wanting some quiet time with me holding her.  When I snuggle her in her bed at night, she snakes her arm under my neck and pats my check.  The other night she put her cheek right against mine and then told me softly, "mom, I'm so glad God made you."  I died on the spot.
• Deals with serious hanger issues.  For reals, sometimes she just loses it and it's all we can do to manage her rage until we can get her to calm down and eat dinner.  Fortunately, it's been less and less frequent to experience this lately.
• She is soooooo close to riding a bike.  Really I think we are ready for the training wheels to come completely off, but she's wanting them on still and we just haven't had the chance to head over to the church parking lot for some serious practice.

We sure love our Rosie!

Rose Begins Preschool

The day is finally here!  Rose has been dying to go to preschool ever since Clara started at John Knox two years ago!  Rose was so pumped for her first day of school and was just thrilled to finally be old enough to go.  

We had a meet-and-greet with the teachers (there are 3 full-time teachers for Rose's class - Mrs. James, Mrs. Richards, and Mrs. Harper) a few days before school started.  Rose went right in and made herself at home playing with a big wooden castle and loads of princess figurines.  There was a big conversation between Belle and Gaston about something I couldn't quite follow.  

While there, Mrs. Harper told me that even though Rose was enrolled in the TTh class for 3 year olds (since she has a January birthday) there was a chance that since the teachers all know Rose already and she was SO CLOSE to the December cut-off that we could get an exception for her to attend the MWF class to give her one extra day of preschool each week.  Lucky for us, Mrs. James (the head teacher) told me when I asked that they had just had a girl cancel her spot for the MWF class because her family was moving and we were given that spot even though there was a waitlist since Rose had a sibling who went to JKCP and family members always get the first spot on the waitlist.  

It's been perfect for Rose since three of her friends from church (who will all start Kindergarten the same year as Rose anyway) are also in the MWF 4 year old class.  So we know lots of friends and all the teachers this year and it's just been such a great transition!  I get to volunteer there in a couple of weeks and can't wait to see how she interacts in the classroom!

Rose's favorite things to do at preschool are dress-up and playing with the princesses.  But she has also come home with art projects that she has been so excited to show to me and Paul and Clara and always tells us "it's for youuuuuuuu!!!"

Their first day of school was actually the day of the solar eclipse and the teachers took the kids out 2 at a time with solar eclipse glasses so they could look at the sun with one-to-one supervision just to make sure none of them pulled the glasses off.  

Rose's extracurriculars include speech therapy (which we FINALLY have set up with the elementary school!), swimming (she's doing AMAZING and can totally swim in the deep end without any fear or hesitation and is working on her arm and leg coordination), and a tap/ballet dance combo class.  More informally, I kept our schedule open so that we can also do Music Makers each week which is a free song/story/playtime thing with a bunch of other moms and toddler/preschool aged kids from the stake.

Speech Therapy is going well so far - we really like Miss Penelope, her new teacher, and it's very apparent that Rose really needs the help.  She's super smart (we have zero worries there) and doing excellent with language skills as far as vocabulary and ability to tell a story.  The only problem she has is with articulating and she drops consonants all over the place.  It's going to be a lot of work getting her speech where it should be since she has almost every issue in the book as far pronunciation goes, but when she focuses, she can actually make a lot of the sounds.

It's more like her brain just isn't connecting the sound with the word and the necessity of saying the word exactly right.  Like she can make the "sssss" sound of a snake, but when it comes to saying "SNACK", Rose asks for "nack" and drops the "s".  When I tell her to make the "ssss" sound and model "ssss-nack" she always flips them and says "nack-sssss" about 7 or 8 times before she FINALLY puts the "ssss" in front of the "nack" sound like she is supposed to.  It's definitely a work in progress but I'm glad to have support and structure to start moving forward.

Rose is still a feisty little thing who is incredibly happy and hilarious as long as she is well-rested and fed but man-oh-man, if that girl is tired or hungry her crankiness is off the charts.  We love her so much though, even when she is being a grump!  I'm so excited to see how she grows this year at preschool!

Rose's Snow White 3rd Birthday Party

Our little miss Rose had her third birthday this past week and what a celebration it was.  It was the first time we have ever thrown a birthday party for her (hashtag second child probs) but really this is the first year that she has even understood what a birthday is all about.  And oh man, now that she has it figured out this girl is birthday obsessed.  

Rose loves all the Disney princesses, but Snow White is definitely her favorite (followed closely by either Cinderella or Belle, I'm guessing).  So when we were trying to figure out what sort of party to throw for her, Snow White just made sense.  On her actual birthday, she woke up to traditional birthday balloons floating on her ceiling.  I heard both girls up around 6:15 but they stayed in their room chatting and playing with the balloons for half an hour until their alarm clock lit up and they knew it was okay for them to come out.  Normally it's more of a struggle than that so maybe we should do balloons more often, lol.   

Clara is our "maker" and is constantly crafting/drawing/writing/inventing things.  She grabbed a spare wooden scrap block from a project Paul has been working on in the garage and created a happy birthday sign for Rose, who loved it.  This picture gives me all the feels.

We had quite a few little dwarfs come to Rose's party to play with Snow White.  My mom sent this costume to Rose for her birthday and it was just too perfect.  Rose was thrilled.  Clara was incredibly jealous, but fortunately I showed her the costume a few days earlier before wrapping it for Rose and we had a good, long conversation about how somebody's birthday is THEIR special day, not Clara's special day.

Clara went through a bunch of ideas of how she could also get a Snow White costume and we could have two Snow Whites.  When that didn't work, she suggested being the Evil Queen.  I shot that down telling her that there would be little kids at the party and while she was big enough not to be afraid of the Evil Queen, they weren't and anyway, it was Rose's special day, not Clara's, and while she would get to play all the games and celebrate WITH Rose, it was not Clara's day and that her day would come on her birthday in May.  After a day or so to mull that over, Clara did awesome on the actual day of the party and really showered Rose with love and support in a way we don't always see so I could tell she really took the message to heart.

I came up with this idea to making "magic mirrors" when I saw super cheap paddleboards at Joann's that were 4 for $1.  I just cut off the elastic string and ball and Paul painted the paddles with some leftover spray paint, then I glued circular mirrors on each one (I think the mirrors were 5 for $1, so I had 2 leftover that I just glued onto small plates for circular mirrors).  Then we (really, my friend Christina who I knew would jump right in and help me) just put dots of glue all around the front of each paddle and the kids decorated them with a bunch of jewels that came in a huge bag.  The bag of jewels wasn't super cheap ($10 with a 50% off coupon at Joann's) but we only used about 1/4 of it and I'm sure we will use these in future craft projects for the girls (crowns, jewelry, picture frames, etc.).    I spread the jewels around the table as much for decoration as ease of access for little hands, and it worked well with the Seven Dwarves mining for jewels vibe that was part of some of our later activities.  After the magic mirrors dried, they went into each child's goodie bag to take home.

One of the Snow White party ideas I saw online was to get a bucket and a bunch of pennies to do a "Wishing Well".  The kids were so cute making wishes and trying to land their coins in the bucket.  They ended up playing this again at the end of the party when waiting for parents because it was so easy and fun for them!

After the wishing well game, we went back to the table to make Seven Dwarf beards.  We had foam beards cut out and the kids glue cotton balls on them.  It worked okay, except that we should have done this earlier so the glue could dry because we pretty much immediately put the beards on and kids started losing cotton balls.  So my execution wasn't great, but I still think the idea was cute.

Once the kids all had their beards (and not everybody elected to wear them), we went out front where we have a rock garden (which I hated when we first moved in but it has since grown on me to the point that I think we are going to keep it although it needs to be weeded and we need to rearrange rocks).  I had ordered a bag of 36 1" plastic jewels through Amazon for $8 and Paul had scattered them around the rocks to create a jewel mine.  The kids all saw it walking up to the door for the party, which was fine because it partially set the scene for the party but we also then "mined for jewels" easter egg hunt style, which took all of a few minutes, but the kids had fun with it.  They then got to put their jewels in their goodie bags along with their dwarf beards and magic mirrors to take home after the party.

We served lunch after the jewel mining.  I made a poisoned apple cake for Rose's birthday cake by cooking a doctored up chocolate cake mix in a medium-size glass oven safe pyrex bowl, which was kind of annoying because I only have one and it took almost an hour to cook each half of the sphere.  Then I stuck the two sphere halves together with frosting, frosted the outside and covered it with red sprinkles, and carved out a little spot to frost with white frosting to make it look like a bite had been taken out of it (I don't think that turned out as great as I hoped it would, but it was fine).  A cinnamon stick for a stem and a leaf that Clara collected from outside finished off the cake.

For the real party food, I did all small, finger food type things for "dwarf food".  We had beanie weinies (those tiny hot dog things), baby carrots, apple slices, chips & guacamole, and mini quesadillas made from wonton wrappers (which Christina made because she is the best).  Oh, and wishing well water that was just water with apple slices in it to make it look pretty.

I also made four different flavors/colors of Jell-O jigglers which I cut into small cubes and placed in clear plastic cups to look like jewels (again with the whole mining for jewels concept).  Those were a hit with the kids, which always baffles me because I think Jell-O jigglers are disgusting, but at least they got eaten!  I spread some decorative moss around the counter to make it look "enchanted foresty" and that was that.

This was our tablescape before the kids showed up.  Just plain yellow fabric for a tablecloth with a blue crushed velvet runner and Snow White colors for plates, napkins & utensils.

Snow White really dug into her cake.

We just let the kids play in the toy room for a bit after finishing lunch because so many of them kept sneaking back there in between earlier activities, but eventually we called them all back out to the living room to open presents.  Rose got so many nice things from her friends and just had a great time.  She said the sweetest little "thank you's!" when prompted.

This princess sticker book was a big hit with both Rose & Clara.  They sat side-by-side and looked through the whole thing (and it wasn't a small book!) exclaiming over each page and set of stickers or settings.

A quick picture of the goodie bags all lined up and ready to take home.

We waited to have Rose open the rest of her presents from grandparents, Aunts and us until her actual birthday, which was the day after her party.  I don't have pictures of the unwrapped presents but she got a toy cash register, a tea set, a Snow White doll, more Mag-former tile things, the Elefun game, some dress-up jewelry, and a sleeping bag for camping.

Since we did a big birthday cake the day of her party, for her birthday I just took her to Nothing Bundt Cakes to get her free Chocolate Chocolate Chip bundtlet (her favorite) and we sang to her and did candles after dinner that night.  

She is still talking about her birthday and already telling me that she thinks she wants a "Belle birthday" next (year, I'm guessing although I'm pretty sure she is convinced she ought to have another party next week).  

Happy 3rd Birthday, Rose!