January Little Things

Captain Underpants pajama birthday party for a friend from church. Those two in the middle in their cookies and milk jammies are pretty dang cute. 

 Just your ordinary dress up day.

Dusted off our Wii to play some sports games with the kids. Anything to keep them moving in our little apartment this cold cold winter. They were both totally sucked in to it.

 It felt like it was every other day that we would find Shae in strange sleeping positions when he was Belén's age. Belén on the other hand has always been a very straight-forward sleeper. She has only fallen out of bed once, while for a good few months we found Shae on the floor every single night. It was so sweet to find her in this position one night. Nothing too crazy, but different than normal. And of course I just can't get enough of a sleeping kid.

 Oh this day. Said goodbye to Darin as he took off for Indonesia and then had an awful dentist appointment with Shae in which he REFUSED to open his mouth for the dental hygienist. He has had his teeth cleaned a few times and never had any problems so I wasn't anticipating any issues. But man oh man was he difficult. He kept saying he didn't like the toothbrush and wouldn't budge his lips to let her in. All the talking and bribing in the world did nothing. It was one of those moments as a parent where I just had no idea what to do, like, I felt totally lost, thinking, "Where is my parent shoulder angel?! What am I supposed to do here!? Help!?" Like, do I physically hold his mouth open? Embarrassing to admit this, but I did try it and he started spitting on me and shaking his head. Totally uncharacteristic behavior of him! It was so weird. I finally just dropped the issue, stopped pushing him, and said we'd try again in six months. Who knows if that was the right thing to do. You tell me oh wise parent experts. Sometimes parenting is crazy.

 We had Belén go first hoping it would help Shae warm up, which it apparently didn't. Thankfully she was easy peasy and was kind to me that day. Let it be known that none of this girls teeth touch. No need to floss yet. 

 Proud rocket ship builder. 

 One day while leaving the Y, we walked past the raquetball courts and Shae was like, "Just a second mom, I need to watch this movie for a minute," then jumped up in the chair and became enthralled in a raquetball game.

 Shae took a fancy to this little lego that he calls Cowgirl Kate from the Cowgirl Kate and Coco series. I went in to give him one last kiss before going to bed myself and thought it was so darling to find her asleep on the top of the bed. She was definitely not there when I put him to bed.

 So many fun snow mountains to climb during outdoor play at preschool. (Also, we were pretty stoked to find that hat at our Ithaca thrift store for $1.99).

 Picture we sent to daddy from the Y to tell him that we wished he was with us swimming instead of in Indonesia. 

Shae wanted to cook something with all the snow on our balcony so I brought a big bowl of it inside and gave them some orange juice, marshmallows, and cheerios and told them to get to work.

 Here is Belén eating all the marshmallows out of her bowl, haha.

 He wasn't satisfied to just play with it and wanted to actually cook it to see what would happen, so we did.

 He made me taste it and it was disgusting. Do I get a best mom award or something? It seriously tasted like vomit.

 Found her like this one afternoon saying, "Hhhhmmm, where daddy?" 

 Went out for Vietnamese food with my good friend Thao for our final meeting. It has been so so fun tutoring her and I am just so sad that she is moving :(. 

 The kids loved this mini bounce house at our friend Peter's birthday party.

 He is constantly showing me his little lego creations and I love them (and him!) so much.

 Pete the Cat pajama story time at the library the night daddy came home. Belén LOVES the Pete the Cat books (as well as the Groovy Joe books and the Nut Family books which are by the same author and this is totally a plug to go check them out if you haven't because they are so good and you can download the songs/stories from their web-sites). She got all shy standing next to him, trying to wave, but was to scared too. It was so stinkin' cute.

 Then her shyness fled and she was all over him, pointing out all of his "groovy" buttons.

A few pics Darin texted me while gone:

Sending funny pictures back and forth with the kids during his travels.

 Lots of food pictures, and I mean, lots. Like, the daily check in was, "So, this is what I ate today."

 My seafood eating husband ate fish!

 The salad that destroyed his insides. That's what you get for seeking out some greens.

 Indonesian Pizza Hut pizza.

After the earthquake face.

Annnnd...no pictures reuniting with Darin because the kids were in bed and I just pulled up and picked him up real quick, but it was a fabulous reunion. We missed him ridiculously and were so happy to have him home!

A Wreck-It Ralph 5th Birthday

Shae has been dreaming of his Wreck-It Ralph 5th birthday for months. We randomly grabbed this Ultimate Disney Party Book at the library about six months ago. I thought it was a story book of Disney character birthdays when it was actually a party theme book. The kids poured over this book for hours planning their birthdays that, at the time, were so far away. We only ended up using two ideas from the book and then made up the rest, but I think it turned out quite well if I do say so myself.

What I really loved about this party is how Shae and I planned it together and worked together to make everything for it. We started with the gold HERO medals. Instead of writing HERO on them, we chose to write the kids names.

 He really wanted a pinata at this party. I was not willing to spend money on buying one, and couldn't come up with a good paper-mache Wreck-It Ralph idea that wouldn't drive me to my grave trying to make, so we went with this simple shoe box building idea. We filled it with discounted Christmas candy that we'd been saving specifically for this purpose and then threw some construction paper and mod podge on there and called it good.

 Darin printed off a Fix-It Felix and Ralph for us to paste on for the final touch. Nothing fancy, but I think it was all the same to the kids and super easy for me. Win win.

We started the party with some Wreck-It Ralph coloring pages that kids could work on as they arrived. We then read two Wreck-It Ralph books. 

 We were hoping to play a Pin the Wrench on the Fix-It Felix game that was in the party book, but when I took it to Staples to blow up, they said that they couldn't because of the book's copyright. Which makes sense, but was annoying as well since the book specifically says to make a photocopy and blow it up. So instead we made up some "wrecking" games. Like throwing bean bags at a tower of plastic cups.

 The cheering section.

 Then we played a coin toss game.

The HERO badge pizza was one of the ideas that we took from the book that Shae was really excited about. Although, I was kindly informed that my pepperoni star did not look like a star. Child honesty at its finest. 

  After eating pizza we made Sugar Rush candy cars. We gave each of the kids a brownie base, a bag of frosting, and a bowl of candy. I was so impressed with their creativity! The cars looked great!

 Shae's car.

  Shae never eats cake at his or anyone else's birthday parties. He is an ice cream lover all the way, so we decided to go with an ice cream cake this year. He chose chocolate and mint chocolate chip ice cream with a sugar cone crust. He helped me throw it together (easiest cake to make) and I used a bit of the extra car frosting to decorate it a little before we ate. For the first time in his life, he ate his entire piece of birthday cake.

 We ended the party with the pinata! Which lasted on the rope for all the kids to hit it twice and then they just went to work whacking it on the ground.

It was such a fun party. I loved seeing how excited Shae was to be with his friends and celebrate his special day.