Happy 3rd Birthday, Sophie!

My two-year-old daughter is gone forever.  Some parts of that age sure were tough, but we also saw an incredible blossoming over the past year.  I guess her biggest accomplishments were learning to read and use the potty, which she did in that order.

This past weekend, I took Sophie shopping for her new birthday dress!  There is a cute little children's boutique in town, and they even have a play area for the kids while you shop.  Sophie went right over to it and played with the trains and cars for a long time while I picked out several outfit options.  Finally I brought everything over and managed to tear her attention away from the train table long enough to have her help me narrow down our options to two (she didn't choose those two directly; I went with nonverbal cues to discern which ones she liked the most).  I corralled her into the dressing room where we tried them on.  It was obvious that she thought this one was the clear winner:

John says it makes her look like an African princess.  Men.

I was probably more excited for yesterday than anyone!  We sang "Happy Birthday" a whole lot over the course of the day.  The first special thing that happened was that Dada made waffles for breakfast:

After I got back from my Thursday morning out, we took the kids to a shady playground to eat a picnic, look at the water, and play.  Dada even joined us!  Sophie wanted to swing most of the time, of course, and this time she got to because there was another parent around to watch Ben at the same time.

After naptime, we played, watched The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, and basically just waited for John to get home with Sophie's favorite food, Chik-Fil-A.  We took the food outside and watched the kids enjoy their chicken nuggets and french fries:

After dinner, I wanted to give the kids their cupcakes as soon as possible so that it wouldn't be so close to their bedtimes.  A great local cupcakery decorated these specially for me:

 

The butterfly cupcakes are Oreo-flavored and the caterpillar ones are strawberry.  Sophie really, really wanted her cupcake, but she did a great job being patient while we asked her to choose which one she wanted (butterfly), took a long time looking around for a lighter, sang happy birthday AGAIN, and had her blow out her candle.  I didn't know if she'd be able to blow it out, but either she did it herself or the wind outside was very fortuitous!  Finally, the kids got to dig in:

Well, all that was a much bigger production than it looks like in the photos (like everything is with little kids), so we just hung out in the backyard and played for a while before cleaning up and going in.  At long last, it was time to open presents!

At this point I will just add that I am so glad I decided not to have a formal birthday party for Sophie this year.  I loved doing it last year, but mostly because it was fun for me.  I don't think she got much out of it.  This year even a smaller party would have been too stressful given all we've had going on, including the illness that's still plaguing our family.

But also, I think that just the presents from us and both sets of grandparents were all she could handle at this age!  One new item all by itself is a big deal for a little kid, so when they get several you almost see their mind getting blown.  Last year, I tried to avoid that by giving her one small gift for each day of the week around her birthday, and I was surprised to discover that that didn't seem to work much better -- she focused on the ones she liked the best, even if she had gotten something new in the meantime.  I also felt it took something away from the one day that is supposed to be special.

So what'd she get??  First we opened all the cards, which Sophie is young enough to still think are like books, so she enjoys going through each one and seeing what it says.  We have some good video of that, but aren't able to post it online.

Here is Sophie opening one of three new books I bought for her:

We also got her a round pillow with a map of the world on it -- aka a soft globe.  She had seen one before and was visibly excited to have one of her own!  The first country she decided to identify was Zimbabwe.

Next, we opened the presents from Grandma Corinne and Grandpa Steve, a doll family and a wooden eco-house, complete with a wind turbine and solar panels, in addition to a modern furniture set.  Sophie became obsessed with this house.  She spent an hour dismantling and reassembling the wind turbine, and having the people in the house "share" the couch and ask each other if they wanted to watch TV shows like The Cat in the Hat and "Uncle Alex" (Trebek).  She even tried to take the house and its components to bed with her last night.  When I told her that we had to put the family to sleep, she cried and cried.  After I said goodnight and closed the door, she got up and played with her house some more.  Just before I went to bed myself, I looked in to find her passed out on the floor next to it.

Sophie also received another little family to play with from Grammy Sue and Grampy Mike.  This one is a family of bunnies whose kids have their own bedroom with bunk beds, pillows and blankets, and a desk full of cool drawers, books, postcards, and even little rabbit-sized pencils.  The beds were more featured in that set, so Sophie really enjoyed putting the rabbits to bed multiple times over the course of the evening.  She even very deliberately made the little bunnies roll over and snuggle with their blankies, just like she does.  This afternoon, she played more with the Mama Bunny and Papa bunny.  They would kiss and hug, then the Papa Bunny would hop away and the Mama Bunny would yell "wait, Papa!"

 

The last present was a tube full of life-like but miniature baby zoo animals, to get her ready for our trip to Jacksonville this weekend.  She liked them, but at that point she already had so many other fun things to play with that she paid less attention to them.  That wasn't so bad because it meant we could let Ben play with something, too.  I actually got three tubes: zoo babies, "down under" animals, and African rainforest animals -- the last two are exhibits that I know they have at the J-ville zoo.  We opened up the "down under" one today, and tomorrow we'll break out the last one just before we go.

And here's a short video of Sophie playing with her animals:

 

Overall, it was a great day.  I really just wanted Sophie to have a lot of fun, because often I feel I have trouble identifying activities that she'll really enjoy.  But I'm pretty sure I was successful this time.  And we still have the zoo to go to.

I wonder if she'll remember any of this?  I remember my 3rd birthday!  Not all of it... mostly just the big plate of M&Ms that was made available to me.  I couldn't believe it.  That is when I learned how awesome birthdays are!

I was kind of surprised how genuinely into the celebration of Sophie I was emotionally.  I knew it was a great day, but I sort of assumed that part of the reason I thought that was that I did something pretty amazing on that day as well.  But upon reflection I realize how invested I am in her happiness for its own sake, and that making the day special for her somehow gives me as much joy, if not more, as celebrating myself in any way.  Awwwwwwww.  Parenthood!