Rose turned three

It happened on Friday—Rose turned three. She is very happy about it. I was much more mentally prepared for this birthday than I have been in the past. I did my reminiscing and mourning early in the week so on Rose’s actual birthday, I was through the nostalgic sniffling and ready for some birthday-rific celebrating.

This year I suddenly realized that my kids are old enough to have favorite things. I know, they’ve had preferences for quite a while now. But it just occurred to me this week that I should do some sort of yearly documentation of those preferences.

After a quick Pinterest idea search, I used Microsoft Word to combine my favorite ideas and created a birthday interview, of sorts. I like how it turned out—I didn’t know if it would be possible to make something so…not boring in Microsoft Word. Success! Some of her answers were less-accurate (her favorite animal is SO totally a horse, but she said cows when I asked her).

Well, back to the birthday. Rose and Jay got up nice and early (6am-ish) on the big day. We opened presents first thing. I barely resisted the urge to do Rose’s hair before she opened her presents.

 

When Rose opened the plastic high-heeled Rapunzel dress-up shoes, she gasped and started stripping out of her pajamas at the speed of light. Then she put on the shoes and hobbled over to the dress-up bin, dug out her crumpled homemade Rapunzel costume, and struggled into it with a little help. [Aren’t those undies perfect? They used to be Jay’s. Every time Rose runs out of Pony undies, she moves on to Jay’s old training undies.]

With her transformation complete, Rose stumble-hobbled up and down the hallway in her new shoes for a little while before returning to the present-opening.

Jay gave her some castle-shaped blocks that he adores, ha ha ha. We also gave her a sweet castle tent (Ikea!), some princess books, the Tangled soundtrack, a David Archuletta CD (she’s a fan), fresh crayons and markers, and a ream of blank white paper. Yes, I used paper to wrap a package of paper. It was her second-favorite gift, after the shoes.

Rose-punzel by her tower.

It SNOWED more the night before Rose’s birthday, so Jeff had a convenient 2 hour delay for school. We spent a pleasant morning together with the birthday girl. A little while after Jeff left, the kids and I bundled up and went out into the whiteness.

I hunted through our closet and dumped the fabric out of our little old plastic bin-sled that I concocted two years ago. I left the rope on the bin all this time, and it came in handy at last. We had fun pulling each other up and down the snowy street.

[a quick flashback to Rose’s last ride in our makeshift sled]

We walked over to Steph and Jasen’s house to play with Layne in the snow.

A snow-couch was about all I could build out of the powder.

We went inside Layne’s house to warm up, and Steph gave Rose some hot chocolate and a birthday present. It was the “Bepunzel movie”—Tangled! Eventually, we went home and had lunch and birthday cake.

THE CAKE: Moan. Last year I gave Rose’s birthday cake its own post, but I’m sort of ashamed that I even have enough of a cake-baking story AGAIN this year to make into another post, so I’m putting the woeful tale in the middle of the birthday joy, to ease the sting of failure. Sorry if my cake-escapades are getting old! I know I’m tired of them, even if I do have to laugh when I look back…

Rose knew exactly what kind of cake she wanted this year, and she never changed her mind during the entire month leading up to her birthday. That was fine with me—she wanted a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I can handle that, I thought, as long as I have a cake mix. Rose and I made the cake the night before her birthday. Sigh, it’s becoming tradition for me to BOTCH every single birthday cake I make, in one way or another. A yellow cake with chocolate frosting—it doesn’t get much more basic than that—right? 

Rose didn’t want it in a rectangle pan, though, and since she so compliantly chose such a simple cake, I felt I should indulge her one request on the shape. So I let her pick between two round pans or a single bundt pan, explaining in detail how awesome a bundt shape is and how less-exciting two plain round pans are. My tactic worked, and she picked the bundt. The plan was to make the bundt and then pour Texas sheet cake frosting on the top. No awful spreading and tearing up the cake. No nightmarish frosting-concocting (is this enough? is it too stiff?). Bake cake, pour on frosting. There’s nothing to it! I had visions of my first-ever birthday cake success: a pretty bundt shape, coated in glossy chocolate frosting. I even thought “wow, I’m actually going to do this right for once!” as I was putting the cake into the oven.

Alas, I forgot the rules of bundt baking at the critical moment. When the bundt pan came out of the oven, I couldn’t remember whether to dump it out right away or let it cool before dumping. As you can probably guess, I chose wrong, dumped the hot cake out, and watched half of it crumble and crack all over the counter while the other half stuck in the pan.

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase birthday bash.

I pieced it together as best I could and then dumped the frosting on top, hoping for a birthday miracle. The problem with runny frosting is…it runs. The frosting coated all the cracks and gashes in the cake and then dribbled off the plate onto the counter. I scooped it back on until it finally solidified somewhat. There was quite a deep pool of fudgy frosting in the middle of the bundt. Note to self—the amount of frosting needed for a 10x15 Texas sheet cake is far greater than the amount needed for a midget crumpled bundt cake.

At least it tasted good.

Last year, we started the birthday tradition of eating birthday cake at lunch AND dinner on birthdays—why wait till night time to enjoy some birthday cake? It’s your birthday ALL DAY, after all. On Rose’s birthday this year, we added to that early-cake tradition: Rose blew out candles twice too: at lunch and then again at dinner. Blowing out candles is fun, so why not do it twice? That way I got a video of her blowing out candles at lunch, and pictures of her blowing out candles at dinner. Minimal documentation stress. Goodbye video vs. picture dilemma during the candle ritual!

“Bir-day-tate!” (birthday cake). We had fun joking that Rose was eating her cousin Tate instead of cake.

I should add that this was the first year that Rose blew out her own candles without any help—and she did it twice! It took a while, but eventually all 3 candles were smoking instead of glowing. That afternoon, we read a pile of Rose’s new princess books (the Little Golden Book versions of the Disney movies). Grama Leslie and Grampa Dan came over to give Rose her present: a talking, moving pink My Little Pony toy and a necklace. Ahem, thankfully the pony has an off-switch.

For Rose’s birthday dinner, I made the perennial favorite kid-food: homemade mac and cheese. Since it was Friday—family movie night—we ate mac and cheese and broccoli in the basement while watching Tangled. We had an intermission to sing Happy Birthday, blow out candles and cut the cake.

After the movie, it was bedtime. Jay and Rose slept in the new castle tent. It has a diameter of just under 4 feet. Good thing they have had lots of practice snuggling up together in their superbed over the past few weeks.

Their pillows alone took up 2/3 of the floor space.

But a few hours later when I peeked in, they were both asnooze.

And just like that, it’s official: Rose is three.

Aches and phases

One of my friends shared the link to this article and I found it to be beautifully written, with PITH. Substance. Juice. Reality and feeling. It felt good to read it because, as a woman and mother, the topic of kids and babies growing up is nearly always on my mind in some form or another. I thought maybe you'd enjoy it too. This was kind of heavy, but this article stirred my thoughts and tugged at my mommy-heart, so I’m sharing it too:

http://sarahbessey.com/learning-live-ache/

Sarah Bessey, the author of this article, recognizes the joy and beauty of time passing and kids growing. I have never heard of her before, but this one post was worth reading, even if her wistful memory of breastfeeding gives me a different (more literal) sort of ache than I think she was referring to.

I still remember the only advice my mom gave me when I first had Jay: everything is a phase. That's all she said, but it was easily the most useful parenting advice I’ve ever heard. Phases come and go. When one phase ends, it always leaves me with a little ache of longing—it’s especially noticeable to me on my kids’ birthdays. (is Rose really turning THREE this week? Sniff. Ache.) But then another phase comes and it fills that ache up with more discoveries and excitement and fun.

I hope this is legal—it is so eloquently descriptive of those deep-rooted mom emotions that I had to paste it here:

“The Ache reminds me of the great and terrible beauty I have seen, of what love I have experienced, of the sorrow and brokenness of loss, of all the love that is still here, of the wonder and miracle of life, of the sweetness of co-creation, of the labour and release, of transcendence.

Praise God, my babies are growing up and that is its own joy and beauty. I’ll miss toddlers in the same way, I’ll miss preschoolers, I’ll miss their kindergarten self, their Grade Two self, as well, and so on through their lives.

…And in another few years, the blink of an eye, I’ll be sitting in a house, alone: the laundry will be done at last, the house will be clean – and it will stay clean, and the floors will be quiet, no one will be asking me for anything at all, my time will be my own, and I will feel the full weight of The Ache for which I’ve been holding vigil at last. 

It’s simply the Ache of time passing, because this is what time does, and our souls are noticing the passing of a season, and it’s okay. It’s okay to let it Ache. It means we’re living and it means we’re loving our life as it stands, loving it enough to notice a transition away.” –Sarah Bessey

I don't know what the future holds for my family. I don't know how many kids we'll end up with. I don't know when I'll know these things. But one thing I do know is that being a parent is the most fulfilling, challenging, important job on the planet. Usually my “ache” for what’s over is completely swallowed up in the glow of what’s happening now. I hope I can keep a broad perspective and truly appreciate each phase for what it is—no matter what it is—and store up sunshiny memories to soothe the Ache and maybe even change it into a Glow.

SNOW—REAL SNOW!

When I was talking with Dan (Jeff’s dad) on Sunday, we agreed that winter needs to END. We have only had the bad parts of winter here, not the pretty, fun parts (aka—snow). While the rest of the country has been pounded with polar vortexes, our winter has been plain old freezing cold and iron gray. No exciting white stuff or precipitation of any kind. Just thick fog and/or gray clouds. Blah. Then yesterday morning, after I was sure all hope for snowfun was lost, it started snowing and kept snowing for nearly four hours! And better yet, the snow was perfectly packable. None of that dusty millimeter-deep white powder we got right before Christmas. This was REAL SNOW!

Tate and Layne came over just before 8am. Jay kept asking and asking to go out and play in the snow. I made him wait till there was enough snow on the ground to actually play in. While we were waiting for the snow to pile up, I did some morning work (clean the kitchen, get everyone dressed and fed, fold laundry, etc.). Then Tate finally snuggled down in the swing for a nap and we were free to go outside. It took at least half an hour to bundle everyone up sufficiently. Around 10:45am, we stepped outside at long last.

  

It was worth the wait! Our driveway was covered in at least two inches of puffy wet snow, maybe three. It was hovering right around 31 or 32 degrees—prime snow-playing temperature.

I put Layne in Jay’s old snowsuit, which was at least two sizes too big for her. She looked like a little penguin waddling around with the crotch hanging down past her knees! She also wore an old pair of Jay’s boots, which were FOUR sizes too big, plus a giant hat rolled up in front so her eyes could peek out. She waddled and clumped around happily in spite of her cumbersome apparel. Eventually, she fell tummy-splat right into a big wet patch of slush, completely soaking our only spare pair of kid-sized mittens. So I gave her a pair of my gloves. They went up to her elbows. Her hat kept sliding down over her eyes and her adult sized gloves kept falling off. Once she even walked right out of a boot and soaked her sock in snow. I could not stop LAUGHING as I put her costume back together over and over.

Kids in snowsuits are such squishable marshmallows!

Squeeze.

It’s been so long since we’ve had good wet snow that we played outside for a solid 20 minutes or more before I even noticed that this snow was snowman-worthy. Then we got down to business.

While I was occupied rolling snowballs, Layne started getting tired and probably annoyed at her restrictive saggy suit. That’s when her boot came off and she lost a glove and fell repeatedly in the cold snow. Understandably, she started crying. I held her while I put the head and accessories on the snowman. Right when I put her down for the obligatory snowman picture, she started crying again, poor tired-cold girl.

 

The kids named him Frosty, of course. I thought he looked quite debonair for a snowman, wearing Jeff’s plaid scarf and tweed fedora hat, and gazing imperiously off into the middle distance of western Grandview. My favorite part, though, was his seed-pod mouth. Seed-teeth!

Mr. Frosty-face ended up perched on the edge of our front yard. Our frond yard has this hollowed out dish-shape, so I placed the snowman up high on the top side of the slant so he would be visible.

After an hour in the snow, we were all ready for some hot chocolate and peanut butter toast.

While we were eating lunch, the sun came out and wreaked havoc on poor Frosty.

Or maybe he just decided to take up yoga—downward dog?

I went out and repaired the damage as best I could so Jeff could see our creation when he came home later.

He looks better from the side, where you can’t see his one-eyed saggy-smiley face.

After lunch, this cute guy woke UP and Layne went DOWN to sleep. Snow sure wears kids out!

Rose should’ve gone down for a nap, but I didn’t make her (she’s in that uncertain transition of to nap or not to nap), so she fell asleep hunched over on a pile of blankets, right before dinner.

All right, winter, we’ve had our fill of your antics at last. You are free to go.

Mullet Patrol

A quick post—I got my ever-returning mullet whacked off again today. Just thought you’d like to know. There will be no more party in the back, even if my neck is a trifle chilly.

Those pesky hairs on the front side are taking FOREVER to catch up to the rest of my head. Hence the regenerating nature of the Shaina-mullet.

While Jay, Rose, and I were visiting Grama Meri last week, Jeff buzzed all of his shaggy hair off, except for the grizzly chunky back section, as a joke. When we got home on Thursday evening, Jeff was waiting for us with sleek business in the front and a very inappropriate party in the back—his students had divided his atrocious mullet (yes, he wore it to school one day) into 3 nasty pony tails. It was hideous. I could barely hug my true love for fear of touching the Mullet. He buzzed it off promptly that night, and I breathed freely once more.

You may call me Bob. For now. Until my next mullet grows in and I have to dream up another creative way to get rid of it.

Sweet Rose

We love this girl. She turns THREE this week. Already??

Rose: "Daddy, I saw a spider on the steeers. It duwy freaked me out. Tan you tome and tiw it? You tan step on it."
(Daddy, I saw a spider on the stairs. It really freaked me out. Can you come and kill it? You can step on it.)

“Show me your happy face”

“Show me your mad face”

“Show me your surprised face”

Show me your baby face--

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

2.9999

Rose is such a sweet little girl (“I’m not wittle, I’m a bid dowl!”—I’m not little, I’m a big girl). Often, she manages to be sweet and stubborn all in the same breath. She loves to snuggle and hug. She likes having her hair done and dressing up pretty (especially like Bepunzel/Rapunzel). Rose is a budding artist. She busies herself with paper, markers, and crayons for long amounts of time every day. It’s mostly still scribbles, but they are more controlled scribbles now—she knows exactly where she wants each rainbow jumble to go. Rose loves ponies and princesses. And her family. We love her back.

Snuggling with Grampa Charley—we visited him and Grama Meri for a few days last week.

We delayed this week’s kid bath time till Sunday morning before our 9am church today, so Rose’s hair was nice and wet when I was combing it. I decided to go all out with the braiding. She loved it.

(8 hours later it was done for, but the doo made it through church and was awesome while it lasted)

I love having a daughter.

"Mommy, tan I may peease tiss you now? Now tan I hud you?"
(Mommy, can I may please kiss you now? Now can I hug you?)

 

Yep, LOVE.