My baby turned 3...

My baby isn't a baby anymore. Not even remotely. She is officially a little girl. We invited some cousins and other family members over for a Pinkalicious celebration last week. (sidenote: I still don't know whether to laugh with joy that she is doing all kinds of big girl things now like drinking from a cup, going potty, reading books all by herself, playing with daddy's ipad all by herself, getting dressed, brushing her teeth, etc., etc., or to shed tears of loss that she no longer lets me rock her to sleep, and wants to do EVERYTHING by HERSELF. Kids these days...they just grow up too fast.) Anyway, the party was fun. We let her help us decorate, pick out goodies for cousins, and set up for the party. Here are some highlights.

I cut the cupcakes out of scrapbook paper freehand and used double sided tape to stick them to the goodie bags. There were lots of fun things in those bags but might I recommend NOT distributing Flarp at any party where there are three year olds? It makes fabulous noises and is loads of fun for your three year old with lots of supervision but is SOOO hard to get out of carpet. I LOATHE it.


Here is the giant Pinkalicious cupcake that Kaia had been talking about for days. She couldn't wait to sink her teeth into it. We made it with one of those giant cupcake pans. The ones where you bake the top and bottom of the cupcake and then put it together. There is layer of pink, creamy goodness in the middle. AND, it's a strawberry cupcake. Completely Pinkalicious. There were smaller cupcakes for all the guests. (Not pink, but just as yummy.)


Other super fun highlights:




I appliqued a Pinkalicious "3" on a pink shirt for her to party in.



Sneaking cake to give to Mini. (It's like she's feeding a cute little puppy or something...Mini, you little beggar! I guess everyone likes a good Pinkalicious cupcake.)

Sessions

Finally finished family photos for a family at church. They have been so patient. I took these pics waaaaay back in August, when the whole fam was around. They really wanted to use them for their Christmas cards and I just got the disc off in the mail yesterday. Whew! Hopefully they can still use them...

Jared

These are some photos from a Senior Photo shoot from hmmmm, August? I think it was August. And then it took me a ridiculous amount of time to edit them. (I have some more of another shoot I'd like to share that I took right after Jared's but those are not quite finished yet. Sigh.) Anyway, it was a fun shoot. His parents came with and tried to coax some natural looking smiles out of him.

When the cat is away, the mice will play...

So the other day I found out what happens when you put Pumpkin down for a nap and forget to latch the safety lock on the closet door. She doesn't really nap anymore. Not really. Not at our house anyway. She will nap for Auntie, but not for me. So we call it "rest" time. (She doesn't really do that either though...I mean, who are we kidding?)

She was "resting" and I was trying to get ahead on laundry, and some baking, and cleaning, and the dishes, and a hundred other little things that have been piling up around here. I guess I was pretty focused or preoccupied or whatever. I never even heard her. (Which really is something because our place is pretty small and she was only about ten steps away from me behind a closed door...a closed door that is WAAAAY thicker than I realized.)

She opened her closet door. Then she had some fun. I'm only guessing here, but based on the photos I would say that she pulled some stuff off the top of her little drawers and maybe out of the drawers too. When that wasn't thrilling enough anymore she pulled her little rocking chair over to the closet and, as she was teetering back and forth, pulled all the clothes she could reach on her tip toes off the hangers and tossed them all in a huge pile on the floor. Meh. I had to go through her closet anyway. She was helping me out really...