Maura's Fourth Birthday

Ya'll know that I couldn't possibly be satisfied by just celebrating Maura's birthday on her party day and letting her actual birthday go uncelebrated!! OF COURSE we made a big deal of it and had fun again! Maura's real birthday was on March 11th and the night before, Brent and I snuck into her room and covered the floor in balloons. She woke up to find herself in balloon paradise and she was so excited about it!! She couldn't believe we'd made such a transformation while she slept!!
The fun didn't stop there! I made Maura pancakes for breakfast, her absolute favorite and I decorated her chair.
She asked for sprinkles on her birthday pancakes and I was happy to oblige. She was so excited about that fact that she's FINALLY four. She's been waiting for months for this big day!
Tristan enjoyed his pancakes too--don't you just love the bedhead?? This little boy is ready for ANOTHER haircut!
I allowed Maura to open one present on the morning of her birthday and she opened the one I'm most excited about. These are tickets to the Disney Princess on Ice. We're going on Saturday and I think I'm more excited about it than Maura!!!
At school, Maura got to wear a crown letting everyone know it was her birthday. The theme of the day was to dress like what you want to be when you grow up, so she's dressed as an artist.
After school, we drove straight to the mall to meet Grammy, Aunt Lorie and Alexandra for lunch. Can you tell that Maura is all keyed up. She LOVED being the center of attention for the day!
Me with my sweet kids. One of these days I'm actually going to take a belly shot so that you can see how big this baby boy is getting!! We really enjoyed our lunch and then moved on for some more entertainment.
Aunt Lorie and Uncle Micah's gift was still to come. Maura couldn't wait to find out when her special secret present was.
A trip to Build a Bear!! Maura has never been near this store before. Lorie couldn't wait to take her and let her construct her very own creation. Maura was almost overwhelmed by the selection...
but of course she was able to find a kitty!!
Maura got to pick out the heart and the Build a Bear employee instructed her to rub it on her forehead so that her cat would always be smart, on her cheek so that she would always give kisses, on her arm so that she would always give hugs and on her heart so that she would always love her. Then Maura gave the heart a kiss and put it in her kitty. So cute! Maura got to pump in the filling and wasn't sure about all that noise!
Tristan and Alexandra, meanwhile, surfed the Internet.
Afterward, Maura gave her kitty a good rubdown and she was ready to go. She picked out some cute pajamas for her kitty to wear(no great surprise since Maura prefers PJ's to all other clothes!). Mittens now shares Maura's bed and goes with us just about everywhere. I'm so glad she has a friend!
What a fun gift! Thanks Aunt Lorie, Uncle Micah and Alex!!
That evening, Grammy, Pappap, Aunt Lorie, and Alexandra came over for dinner and to round out our day of celebration. We ate our spaghetti and meatballs(Maura's favorite) and her choice...
Worms in Dirt. She loved her dirt cake and especially loved the gummy worms and bugs on top!
Getting ready to blow out the candles!
Believe it or not, this child had MORE gifts to open. Brent and I saved most of her gifts to give her on her real birthday, so she couldn't wait!
So excited about her new Pterodactyl toy.
Even more excited about the kitty cat house. This ended up being her favorite present of the birthday. I loved making my girl's day special. She's a special girl and we love her so very much.

A few words about Maura at four. She's such a smart little girl and has a tremendous vocabulary. Just this morning, she told me that she was "concerned" about the fact that the movie wasn't playing in the car. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Maura likes big words--both her mommy and daddy do too. She's saying the cutest things these days. The other day at church, it was baby dedication Sunday. She was watching the slide show with rapt attention and then turned to me and said, "This is a great church. I love this church." I think she meant that she was really enjoying the service, but it was adorable. Many of her thoughts start off like this these days..."Mommy, I love you, but..." What follows has nothing to do with what the sentence started out with. It usually goes like this, "Mommy, I love you, but, why is the sky blue?" She's getting really cuddly and lovey lately, which I loving. She's never been much of a cuddler, but recently she's wanting to crawl up into bed with me and snuggle and give hugs and kisses. I'm loving the love! She's also very excited about the new baby and talks to my belly and gives him kisses. I've yet to be able to allow her to feel the baby move. He tends to move a lot more in the evenings after she's gone to bed.

Maura is doing well with all her physical skills and can jump on one leg and pedal a bike. We're still working on steering, though, because she tends to end up in the grass!! She's quite the artist and loves nothing better than to sit down and color with markers. She made up a story the other day, complete with illustrations. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. Actually, she wants to be a "paintist." I haven't told her yet that it's painter, because it's so cute to hear it said like that. She knows all her letters and can write most of them really well. Only occasionally does she need me to remind her how to write a letter. She likes to have me spell out words so she can write notes. She's working on reading and can recognize a few sight words and sound out others. She can't WAIT to learn to read so she can read to herself. Unfortunately, I haven't been working with her on this as much as I would like because I'm just so tired!! All I want to do while Tristan is napping is to take a nap myself!!

Maura is really into "why." I think it's her favorite word. It's exhausting, though, because no matter how thoroughly I think I answer a question, she always counters with "Why?" I try to be patient, but eventually we get to the point where I finally answer, "Because that's just the way God made it!" She does ask some really great questions, though, and recently we've had discussions about chemistry, physics and biology. She can now explain the molecular structure of water and how it reacts as it goes through it's changes from solid to liquid to gas. No kidding, really! She's so inquisitive and Grammy and Pappap gave her a great set of books for her birthday that will hopefully answer some of those millions of questions!

Maura no longer naps, much to my sadness. She does have "quiet time" every day where she's supposed to play or read quietly in her room. Apparently "quiet" is a relative term to a four year old and she frequently interrupts my nap with the sound of her jumping around! She is definitely ready for bedtime when it rolls around, though, and that usually happens between 7:30 and 8:00. She wakes up around 7:30 too, so I know she's getting plenty of sleep for her age group. Her favorite foods are Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Honey Nut Cheerios, but she loves all sorts of good for you foods too. Maura loves to sing all day and makes up little songs too, usually about the cat. I need to film some of them, but she gets self conscious when the camera goes on. She still loves to pretend and spends most of her waking hours as a kitty, duck or bat. I love that she has a great imagination. The other day I watched her as she sat in her doorway. She stuck her arms straight out in front of her and then hugged them to her body. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me that she was hugging Jesus. Heart melting, for sure!! I do love this sweet girl and can't wait to see how she grows and develops over the next year!

Maura's Kitty Party

SO EXCITED! My girl is SO EXCITED about her birthday this year. I actually don't think she's ever looked forward to something as much as she has looked forward to turning four. Part of the reason is that we were having a kitty cat party for her fourth birthday and kitties are her favorite thing in the universe(with the exception of her blanket) at the moment. We celebrated Maura birthday with a party this past Saturday, but those of you who know me well know that the birthday was NOT over on that one day. Stay tuned for more birthday extravaganza fun!!
Yes, it's blurry, but it's the only shot of Brent and I with our girl on party day. My girl is normally dour faced in photographs, but on this day she needed no urging to smile. I think she smiled the whole day. It's amazing to me that we brought this baby girl home as a tiny, less than eight pound bundle just four years ago. She has blessed our lives so much in the past four years and we can't thank God enough for her sweetness!
Maura with Grammy(who she now, inexplicably, calls Grandma) and Pappap.
The party food all set up and ready to devour. Mom, Lorie and Katie helped me so much to get ready for the party. Between them all, the house was cleaned from top to bottom, the food was finished, and the decorations went up. I couldn't have done it without them.
I LOVED the cat silhouettes. So cute!! We even had a cat chasing mice.
The party table with the stuffed kitties centerpiece. I loved how Katie put the paw print stickers on the table. Looks like a kitty just moseyed across.
When the kids arrived, they were able to pick out a cat to adopt. The "vet"(Katie) checked out the kitty to see if it was healthy, then asked the child to name it and sign an adoption certificate.
Katie did an awesome job as the vet. She handed the kids their kitty and a "collar" for the child to decorate with glitter glue. SO. MUCH. FUN!!
Tristan loved the excitement and general confusion of the day. He took advantage of the opportunity to get in lots of trouble while everyone else was preoccupied, but he had just as much fun as all the rest of the kids!
Our former neighbors Shauna, Emily and Sydney came to help celebrate.
Soon after they arrived, I asked the kids if they wanted to dress like kitties. Many of them were eager to don the ears, tails and whiskers and pretend to be a cat for the day. Lily made an adorable cat.
So did Addia...
Sarah...
and Lainey.

Uncle Micah and the sweetest kitty of the day, Alexandra. She wasn't sure what to make of all the confusion and noise, but she certainly had a lot to look at!
I sat the kids down once everyone got there and we talked about the types of things that kitties like and don't like. The kids were pretty good at this. They said kitties like mice, fish, balls, and playing. We decided that most kitties don't like dogs, which fit nicely into the first game, "Meow, meow, woof!"(Duck, duck, goose.) The kids who chose to play LOVED this game and had a great time running around the circle and getting to choose the next "it." We had lots of giggles and some near miss collisions!
Tag, Liam's it!!
Our next game was a string game. My sister, Katie, was good enough to set it up for me. Each child had a string that they had to follow in order to find a prize at the end. It was WAY harder than it looks and took each child FOREVER, but I think most of them liked the game.
Everyone kind of looked like Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment, just not quite as sexy!! The kids had a lot easier time maneuvering than us adults, but finally all the kids were able to find their toy mouse at the end of their strings.
We only let two kids on the string course at a time, so the rest of the kids colored kitty pictures that I'd printed off the Internet. I was surprised how many kids were willing to sit down and color in the middle of a party.
After most of the kids were finished with the string game, we took the kids outside and showed Maura her first present of the day, an inflatable house. She was so excited! Inflatables are almost always her favorite things to do at fairs and community gatherings and I love how worn out the kids get in them!! She could hardly stop jumping to give her guests a turn, but she eventually gave all her friends a chance to try out her new house. (The bouncy house took a sinister turn for her the very next day, however. After her nap on Sunday, I took her outside to bounce, but evidently didn't secure the blower to the bouncer very well. She was happily bouncing along when the blower became unhooked and the house started deflating around her. She started screaming and became more and more frantic as the walls closed in around her. I couldn't get to her quickly enough and she was absolutely terrified by the time I got her out. She was crying, but I was laughing so hard that I was peeing my pants. She could NOT see the humor in the situation, but both Brent and I couldn't stop laughing. It took her awhile to reassure herself that it wasn't going to happen again, but she finally got back in and tried it again.) Next, we played a relay race of sorts with litter box scoopers and balls.

Anyone who has tried a relay with a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds knows that they do NOT get team games and the concept of a race is lost upon most of them, but they all enjoyed running around with their scoops and balls.

We wound up the games with the parachute. I put some balls and toy mice in the parachute and we had fun bouncing them up in the air. After awhile, we told all the kids to get under the parachute and they loved having it come down on their heads.
For lunch, the kids all had a kitty cat pizza. I used red peppers for the whiskers and mouth, pepperoni for the ears, black olives for the eyes and a mushroom for the nose. I thought they turned out super cute and the kids liked them and all ate about two bites! They also ate goldfish crackers, cheese cubes, strawberry mice and Swedish fish.
Halfway through lunch, Nan and Poppa arrived from Tennessee and Maura left her pizza to race over for some hugs and lovin'. She was so excited to see them.
Payton certainly enjoyed his lunch.
Liam is a little camera shy, but I know he liked his pizza. The kids also got goldfish crackers, cheese cubes and strawberry mice for lunch. The adults ate baked rigatoni, and strawberry spinach salad. Yum.
I think this must be Jentry's sassy face!! She made it whenever I asked her to smile.
I thought the cupcakes turned out so cute. Maura definitely wanted pink and Grammy decorated them to her specifications.
I was really happy with how the cake turned out. I made it difficult for myself by adding the "hair" all over, but it looked really cute.
Maura was one happy present opening girl. Apparently she can smile whenever she looks at the camera, but you're guaranteed success only on her birthday!
Lots of presents means lots of fun opening gifts. Her friends weren't quite as enthused about it, so we tried to hurry it along.
Maura was SO excited when it came time to sing and blow out candles. She didn't stop smiling the whole time.
Concentrating on blowing out those candles! She got them all on the second attempt.
One of Maura's favorite gifts was from her Aunt Lorie. She bought Yukon Cornelius to go with Maura's Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. Maura almost hyperventilated when she opened the package!
Aunt Emily had a winner too, with Pegasus. We've been playing flying horse games ever since Saturday.
Aunt Katie brought Maura some Littlest Pet Shop toys that Maura and Tristan have fought over ever since! I actually had to put them up today before the kids came to blows over them! Thanks to Aunt Katie, Aunt Lorie and Grammy for helping to make the party possible. If it had just been up to me this year, the party would probably have been a pretty sad affair, but these ladies helped to make it truly special!
After everyone else left, Maura and Tristan were able to enjoy some great play time with Nan and Poppa. They both had so much fun playing with their grandparents!
Tristan got some special Poppa cuddles. Tristan was Poppa's boy on Saturday. Tristan wouldn't let anyone else do anything for him--only Poppa would do! We so appreciated the special effort they made to be with us for Maura's party! What a fun day! What an exhausting day! Brent and I put the kids to bed at 7pm and headed to be not too long afterward!

Maura gives birth

We've always tried to be honest with our kids when they ask "those" types of questions. I prefer to use the real words for body parts and be honest about bodily functions than to have to have confusion later in life. We try to be nonchalant about such things and generally it works out and we have relatively few embarrassing moments with the kids. Maura had the full information about how Tristan would be born, so she has the same expectation for this baby. Her favorite movie at the moment is Milo and Otis, which has both a cat and dog birth scene. She watches this movie all the time and, understandably, this scene has become a part of her most recent pretends. I recently caught this hilarious scene on the camera and just had to share it with you. Maura came to me in this condition and told me that she was getting ready to have kittens. Look at those pants! I wasn't sure how many kittens to expect. I asked her how the kittens were going to be born and and she flopped down...
Pulled her pants open and peered inside...
And pulled out her first kitten.
It was soon followed by her second...

third...
and fourth kitten. Whew! This momma cat should be breathing a sigh of relief!
Maura laid down to nurse her kittens after her traumatic kitten birth! After all this, I questioned the wisdom of allowing her to watch birth scenes quite so often, but I guess there are a lot worse things that she could be watching. At least she's convinced that Milo and his honey are married!
Not to be outdone, Tristan has to get his cheese on whenever the camera comes out. As for a hair update, cutting his hair has allowed it to become MORE curly at times. This "do" is how he looks when he wakes up from naps. It's crazy, bit it's just so Tristan!!

Hope you enjoyed this insight into our crazy lives and what goes on around here on an almost daily basis! I love my funny kids!