Emersyn's 4th Birthday

{I know Everett's birthday was first but I'm still waiting to get his party pics back from a friend. His post will come later}

I cannot believe my baby girl is FOUR years old now!! She's officially a little girl now, a little kid not to be confused with a toddler. My preschooler. Wow.

I wasn't sure what to do for her birthday this year since I knew I wanted to throw a big bash for Everett's first one. However, I wanted to do SOMETHING since she's more aware of things now at this age and because birthdays are like a love language for her. She has a wooden cupcake set and she plays birthday party nearly every day with her babies. She loves singing happy birthday and is totally into celebrating like her mama. I love it.

We love to frequent our local Starbucks and the manager had offered casually one day to throw her a birthday party. Initially I didn't think it would work because of the amount of people that would come but then I decided to cut the party list to only kids that are preschool age with Emersyn and do a party there. It turned out darling!! There were 9 little girls there, plus moms, a few dads and a bunch of younger siblings. There were 5 one year olds! It was a little crazy but a lot of fun!!

I brought the paper plates and napkins. Starbucks did the balloons and gave me the kids cups. :) 

Emersyn even got a present from Starbucks, a cool new tumbler! 

We did the party at 10am which is a little early for a birthday party but the perfect time for Starbucks! It was a great success and we may just do it again someday! :) Next year Emersyn said she wants her party to be at Fred Meyer (which is a grocery store if you're not from my area). She's pretty easy to please.

We continued our celebration of Emersyn's last day being three later in the evening with dinner at Baja Fresh, bowling and then coffee/hot chocolate at our favorite outdoor spot.

The actual day of her birthday was the day after her party. I learned on her two year old birthday to never do her party the day of her birthday again. I love spreading out the celebrating and oftentimes I'm too exhausted after a party to enjoy the birthday kid. The night before Ems birthday I felt like Santa Claus. I was busy baking her ice cream cake, went to the store for wrapping paper and last minute fun items, wrapped up all her presents and then got her room all set up to wake up to. I hung streamers outside her door and we covered the floor of her room with balloons (thank you Pinterest). My mom was sharing a room with her and said that when Ems woke up she was SO excited about the balloons and said the streamers were sooooo beautiful. 

Brett and I have a tradition of waking up our kids with a balloon and singing happy birthday to them on their birthdays. Since Emersyn had already woken up, we told her to go back into her room and we could come sing to her. You should have seen her sprint for her room. I then hear her scream, "Mimi.....OUT!!". My mom was sleeping in her bed and apparently Emersyn wanted to have the authentic birthday morning experience so she kicked my mom out of the bed and got all snuggled in the covers so we could come and *wake her up* by singing happy birthday. It was too cute. 

I made her birthday banana pancakes and then we got ready to go pick up her cousin for an afternoon at the *spa*. (Thank you Groupon!) 

Emersyn and Annabel got to get their hair and nails done. It was so cute! It totally makes me want to get more creative with Emersyn's hair. 

 

Special birthday lunch with cousin at Burgerville. 

For her birthday dinner we went to Old Spaghetti Factory, our family's favorite, and had a nice dinner with my mom, Brett's parents and my brother's wife. My brother had to work. After dinner we headed home for cake and presents!

Ems got spaghetti all over her birthday dress so she got to change into her new Minnie jammies from her cousin. 

I got Emersyn this special devotional bible as a gift from me. I wrote her a letter in the front of it. Last night was the first chance I got to read it to her. I read her the letter first and she loved it. Then I told her I could read one little chapter from the book before bed and she just asked me to read the letter I wrote to her again. It made my heart so happy and it was a very special moment for me and my girl.  

I made a strawberry ice cream cake, per the birthday girls request!  

I cannot believe I am the mama to a FOUR year old. I am so so blessed to have my two children and I thank God for them every day and pray that I can be the best mama I can be to these precious gifts that I have been entrusted with!! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMERSYN GRACE!!  I hope your day was wonderful!! 

Miscellany Monday

{1} We've been having a lot of fun in the sun lately! I have friends from across the nation that can't wait for Fall but I sure can. Fall is one of my favorite seasons but our summers are too short! I can understand if it's been in the 80's & 90's since March though, which is the case for some of my blogger friends. :) Also, I know humidity is a killer and we don't have much of that here.

{2} We're in full party planning mode here! Everett's first birthday party is on Sunday. On Saturday we have two first birthday parties to attend, one in the morning and one in the evening. This is a crazy time of year for babies, that's for sure. I'm hoping to make Everett's party creative and fun. I always tend to start out with high hopes and then slowly start to simplify as the week goes on. We'll see. I'm reusing the food and gifts banner from my baby shower. His birthday party will have a very similar feel to my baby shower. I blogged about my baby shower HERE. And guess what? My friend that created all the baby shower graphics now has it listed on Etsy HERE. Her Etsy store is super cute....check it out!

{3} Emersyn has baby fever. The other day at New Seasons she stopped to ooh and ahh over a newborn and went on and on about how sweet and tiny they were. Then in the car on the way home we were listening to country music. A slow sappy country song came on, one I'd never heard before, and I hear Emersyn say in the most pathetic, tearful, adorable way..."this song reminds me of when hair baby was born". Then she proceeded to tell me how tiny hair baby was when she was born and how she's growing up so fast. SO funny. Totally something I would say to Brett in the car while we listen to music.

{4} I can't believe my BFF is going to have her baby girl in less then a month!! I'm so excited to go visit her in October.

{5} Something about summer zaps my motivation to cook! Could be the heat but it's not hot in my house.

{6} Brett has his first final exam this week and then he's done with school until the fall term starts in September. Cue the hallelujah chorus!!! I'm so excited to enjoy the end of summer with him and we are going to take full advantage of his lack of school schedule.

{7} I'm currently obsessed with pistachios. SO good!

{8} My mom gets here on Friday, hooray!

Fill in the Blank Friday

1.  The age I will be on my upcoming birthday is   32. Seriously?? I totally had to think about that before I answered.

2.   The best birthday present ever would be   okay, like the BEST ever?? I suppose the best ever present would be a new house! But speaking realistically, the best birthday present I could give myself would be getting to my goal weight. I've lost nearly 40lbs already...getting to my goal weight is totally doable by my next birthday. 

3.  My favorite birthday to date was    Probably my 30th. Brett and I went on a romantic dinner and then the next day he did a little surprise party with friends. My friend Rachelle made me a little book full of affirmations written by my friends. Very special. 

4. Birthdays make me feel    SO happy!! I love birthdays and love celebrating!!!!!

5. The worst birthday I ever had was   hmm..my 21st birthday was really lame...was having a lot of drama with friends at the time. And any birthday where my husband *ahem* might not have done anything special. Birthdays aren't a big deal to him but hopefully after being married to me for nearly TEN years, he's beginning to realize that they are to ME! 

6. When I was born  I was 8lbs something. I was born in California via c-section to my mom.

7.  So far my favorite age has been   Probably 27...that's the age I became a mama. :) 

Little patch of grass

When Brett and I purchased our first home, we could have cared less about a yard. We wanted something new and low maintenance. That's exactly what we got in our home. However, now that we've had two kids, I wish we would have considered a yard. I know that this house is where the Lord wanted us and He's blessed us tremendously with a low payment and low maintenance. 

I tend to get wrapped up in perfectionism at times and feel like since our yard is little, it doesn't count at all. But my kids don't see it that way. We've had warm weather here (finally) and so I decided it was time to set up the sprinkler in our little patch of grass in the front yard. The kids LOVED it. Never once did Emersyn complain that it was so little, she was just grateful for anything at all. I'm glad I got over my frustration with our tiny yard and let the kids enjoy what we are blessed to have.

Boys versus Girls

Emersyn- 11 months

 Everett- 11 months

As much as it pains me to admit, I'll never forget that sinking feeling I had in my stomach when I saw the unmistakable boy part on the ultrasound while I was pregnant with Everett. I was totally shocked....what?? How could this be?? I had everything already for an August baby girl. And boys are gross (mainly teenage ones)....certainly I was not cut out to be a boy mom. I couldn't really wrap my mind around having a baby boy until he was placed in my arms after an agonizing labor. I loved him instantly and was so thankful.

Now that I've been a mama to a little boy for almost a year, I can honestly say that my little boy is the sweetest, happiest, silliest little man I've ever met and I am SO glad that God didn't let me pick the gender of my second child. Everett is the perfect addition to our family and I am having SO much fun parenting him. He has been very different then Ems in some ways, similar in others.

Differences between Emersyn and Everett:

*Everett is very curious. Emersyn was a sit tight kind of girl....never got into anything, wasn't too big on exploring. Everett loves to be everywhere. We have to corral him in the living room, something we didn't have to do with Ems. I don't believe in hard core baby proofing if it's avoidable and so far we've been able to keep him off our stairs by saying "no no" but we'll see if that still works as he gets more mobile. I feel like I say "Everett David!" multiple times a day. :)

*Everett is constantly making noise. He loves shrieking, *talking*, and yelling. He is also always banging something. His three favorite things right now are a toothbrush, a plastic red fry pan (from the dollar bin at Target), and a wooden spoon. He loves banging the fry pan on anything he can find, walls, toys, the floor, etc. I don't remember Emersyn doing this, it's totally a boy thing and it's totally cute.

*Everett is STILL swaddled. I can't even believe it. Emersyn stopped being swaddled around 5 months or so? This was due to the fact that she could bust out of her swaddle so we just stopped using it. However, we found this wonderful swaddle (actually a friend let us borrow it) when Everett was tiny and we've just been using it ever since. He took one nap unswaddled once (we laid him down when he was already asleep) and he only slept for 20 minutes. When he's swaddled he will sleep for well over an hour. Therefore, I pick swaddling! I suppose he can't be swaddled forever but I'm not sure when I'll be willing to deal with the painful weaning of the swaddle. Ha.

*Emersyn was a binky addict and Everett only likes the binky when he's going to sleep. Otherwise, he's not interested in it at all! This is a good thing though, weaning Ems off her binky wasn't fun when she was 2.5. 

*Everett is like giddy happy nearly all the time. Emersyn was a little more serious, definitely more of a thinker baby. We joke that every day is the best day of Everett's life because of how excited he gets. Emersyn was a happy baby but I wouldn't have described her as overly joyful. I don't have a LOT of big smiley pictures of her as a baby and it's hard to get a picture of Everett where he's NOT smiling! :)

*Everett will totally interact with strangers, where Emersyn would just stare at them skeptically. Everett will smile and wave and flirt. So fun.

*Everett is a LOT bigger then Ems was. At this age she was wearing some 9 months stuff still but mostly 12 months stuff, possibly some 18 months stuff. Everett is mostly wearing 12-24 months stuff. Today he's wearing 24 months jammies and they don't even look big on him! I'll be curious what their stats will be at his one year appt. 

Similarities between Emersyn and Everett:

*Both of my babies are pretty chill. They will let anyone hold them and do fine in new situations with new people.

*They don't mind being in the car and are pretty adaptable. They don't have strict schedules and do fine with later bedtimes occasionally. They even sleep in the next day. Missing naptimes is also not a big deal for them. Emersyn definitely can get cranky and naughty as a preschooler when she's over tired but as a baby, she rolled with it. Both my kids slept through the night starting around 6-8 weeks.

*They are both insanely cute. :)

*They both look the same when they cry. I don't think that they look that alike anymore but when they cry, they could be twins. At this point Emersyn cries way more then Everett (Lord help me some days!!). :) 

I composed this list mainly as a record for myself to remember. If any friends have noticed differences between Ems and Everett, I'd be interested if I left anything off this list. :)

One thing is for sure with both kids.... I am lucky to be their mama!