It was a fun day… a bounce house (that she stayed in nearly all day), a few friends from preschool and her cousins, and a friend of mine and her daughter… cake, presents… and a late nap in the car on the way home.  It went well and she had a blast.  LOOOVED the bounce house.

And the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl.   Awesome.

I invited four of her friends from school, so far one has RSVP’d, but I did give the invitations a bit late (last Wednesday), so I pretty much expected to not hear from anyone until this week.  The one child who I was hoping would come (the most out of the four), her mom RSVP’d last night, so I’m happy about that.  This little girl and one other at school are pretty much what I’d equate to the Kiddo’s best friends, particularly this girl, so I’m glad she can make it.

I’m still not sure what we’ll get her since the party itself is really starting to add up (yes I’m already thinking CEC would have been cheaper at this point, especially if I kept the nbr of kids invited to a minimum). 

If we ever have another child, I’m going to try to plan it so that the birthday doesn’t fall anywhere near Christmas!  At first I figured almost a month away would work out ok, but I’m quickly finding that it’s still quite a crunch!

Her party theme is Tinkerbell, and I was able to find a place that has a Tinkerbell bounce house for $115 for six hours.  That is much longer than we’ll ever need, we’ll probably not even need it for three hours.

But anyway.  I still need to get plates and stuff, and order a cake.  The last couple of years I got half sheet cakes… this year, even though there will be more people at the party (most likely), I’m going to go with a 1/4 sheet; that seemed to be enough at the CEC parties and there were a lot more people at those than what I’m planning on having at the Kiddo’s party, so it should be sufficient, particularly if we include ice cream.

I also need to get some stuff for the goodie bags, which I may go shopping for this weekend while the Kiddo as at her Grandmother’s house for her monthly overnight stay.  AND I still need to figure out what we’re going to be feeding everyone.  I’m thinking maybe just four or six $5 footlong subs from subway…  Cut each of those halves in half again and that should be a good variety of choices, you think?

I think I may consider her party her gift though, since the bounce house itself is costing a pretty penny, plus I just recently got her a bunch of new clothes, too, so technically she’s already gotten quite a bit from us.  Unless I can find something inexpensive to include as our gift, but at this age I don’t think she is really going to notice whether or not a present has “from mommy and daddy” on it or not.

It kind of sucks that her birthday is less than a month after Christmas, but ah well.

This party is for who I would guess is probably her “best friend” at preschool, as she hangs out with this little girl and one other girl almost exclusively; this girl is the one we saw while waiting in line to see Santa on Christmas Eve morning and she cried after her friend left to go home as she’d already seen Santa and wasn’t feeling well.

I still need to stop at a store on the way and pick up a gift bag to put her gifts into, and probably a little card to go with it.

Speaking of parties, the Kiddo’s is coming up in a few weeks but we’re not going to have it at Chuck E’s – mainly because it costs $10 per child to have a party at CEC and that ONLY feeds the kids – the parents will either have to share with their kid or get their own food, or even wait it out until they get home.  No, we’re going to have her party at her Grandmother’s house like we usually do and only invite a couple of her friends from school – mainly just the two girls she hangs out with most of the time, and family.

Although I may look into renting a bounce house this time because she absolutely LOVES bounce houses – there was one at the neighborhood New Year’s Eve block party and she was in it for at least 45 minutes straight when we first got there.  And she kept going back, even after we had to take a longer break because too many kids got in it at once, including older kids, and a couple of the kids, including the Kiddo, knocked heads and there was a bit of a crying fest for a while.  It didn’t deter her later, except I tried to keep her out while the bigger kids were in it since they can be so rambunctious and oblivious to the younger kids.

Now to just decide whether to have the party ON her birthday, which is a Sunday, or do it the day before.  Hmmm… What to do, what to do…

We are, with the exception of some sodas for the holiday party and a few other food items. But as of yesterday our gift shopping is complete, I had two things left to pick up and I was able to get those, one of which at a huge discount I was not expecting. Yay!

The Kiddo is off from daycare this week to spend it at home with me, and I dragged her out and about with me yesterday. She did pretty well considering she didn’t get a nap until we got in the car to head home at about 4pm.  And then it was only 15 minutes and after we got home… BOOOY was she cranky!  Poor kid.  Nevertheless she still did not want to go back down to sleep, but the rest of the night she did alright.

Even another trip out to the grocery store was fairly uneventful, although I did spend a bunch of time playing the “I’m going to count to five and if you don’t (insert command)” game with her.  But she didn’t have any meltdowns, so that is cool.  Plus she saw one of her little friends from preschool while we were there, too.  It was quite cute, we crossed paths several times during shopping, and we even ended up checking out at the same time, they two lanes down from us, and while we were both standing in line, her friend would shout out “Kiddo, where are you!!?”, to which my daughter would respond, “I HE-RE!!”, and would even try leaving the lane to go look for him.  There was no one behind us, but I ended up wrangling her into the cart so she’d stay put while I paid.

Today it’s baking day.  I picked out five cookie recipes to bake, and I’m about to print them out so I can get started with the two that will need to chill for a couple of hours.  Those are also the ones that will be those that I’ll have the Kiddo help me cut out before baking, and then either later today, or tomorrow before the party, we’ll decorate together.  I just hope a fondant rolling pin will work ok because I couldn’t find anything else other than that at the walfart, and I had completely forgotten to pick up one at Bed Bath & Beyond while I was there.

Sure, I remembered to buy new mixing bowls, but not a rolling pin.  Way to go!

Off to begin baking about a billion cookies.

So last night my husband printed out December from iCal on his mac and we taped it on the Kiddo’s wall above her dresser so she can (hopefully) not reach it without our help.  We had her cross off yesterday’s date, and every night before bed we will let her cross off that day.

Usually we don’t use our video camera much, but I think it is going to be used at least twice this coming week – once on Friday for her preschool’s Christmas presentation, since my husband will not be able to get out of work to attend (it will be at 3pm), and again Christmas morning so we can record her reactions to opening her presents.

There is one item in particular that we decided just recently to get for her after my husband noted how much she liked it at the preschool – the Leapfrog Tag reading system.  Yes, our daughter is not yet three years old, and the system is geared toward 4-7 year olds, but she knows how to use the one at school and sits intently clicking on the pictures with the pen.  So we figure, what the heck, if she is interested in it, why not? It encourages learning so it’s certainly not going to be a waste by any stretch, especially if she uses it frequently.  We bought four books (it comes with one), and the carrying case to store it in.  And even better, it was on sale at ToysRUs, PLUS they are giving $20 gift cards with the purchase of that system.  Score!  So I may go back this weekend to get her some stocking stuffers or something with the gift card.

I think she’ll enjoy the rest of what we got for her…

And, I think she wants a pink tree, too. LOL  Pink being her favorite color right now, this does not surprise me much.  I mentioned this to my husband and he kind of poo-poo’d the idea, saying we already have a tree, she can enjoy that one.  Still, I am considering getting her a pink tree, if just for her play area.  But I’d probably save putting it up for Christmas Eve after she goes to bed.  If I have enough $ leftover after gifts, I may get her one.  I think she’d be ecstatic at having her own, PINK, tree.  And of course I would have to get her some pink and white ornaments to go with it.  But we’ll see.

Of course when we put up our little 4 ft green tree, she will be helping put the ornaments on the tree. I’d still like to eventually get a taller tree to put in the front window, but that may have to wait until next year.  I may look into getting a 6 or 8 ft after the holidays depending on what is leftover with the sales.  I want to get a pre-lit, that is what our 4ft tree is and I totally like the fact that we don’t have to mess with tangled messes of lights during the decorating process.

I just hope that she can keep her hands off the ornaments once they are up.  I have a feeling we’ll have more trouble with her keeping her hands off the tree this year than we did her first and second Christmases combined.

On a side note, I think it’s bad enough that stores had their Christmas stuff up for sale the day after Halloween, but even the radio station that plays Christmas music exclusively each Christmas holiday, is already playing Christmas music.  Thanksgiving hasn’t even come and gone yet, people!  I know the economy is in the tank so stores want to make the most of their time, but really?  Christmas music on the radio? Please.  I like my share of Christmas music, in moderation, but this is just too early.  So we shall be avoiding that and any other station that plays Christmas music until we feel the time is right to start listening.

Today I dressed her in a red shirt and a pair of black leggings with a Christmas theme – candy canes, bows, snowflakes.  We don’t have any black shoes for her right now that fit so she is wearing her silver shoes with the toes worn down.   Oh well.  I also gave her teacher a little redc velvet clippy that I made a while back to put into her bangs before the pictures are taken.  There was no point in me putting the clippy on her earlier since she would just take it out and it would get lost.  She likes wearing bows and piggy/pony tails and such but doesn’t quite comprehend that they’re *supposed* to be left in the hair as long as possible. Heh.

Anyway I hope they turn out well.  We’ll probably buy the whole package again, which last time cost like $65 for the entire pack of 10 sheets in various sizes.  I’ll have to post one of them after we get them back so you can see my precious little girl.

When the ToysRUs big toy book came in the mail, we gave it to her to look through to try to gauge what she may be interested in having for Christmas and her birthday.

The big hit was the page that had a lot of pink stuff on it, as that happens to currently be her favorite color.  Her comment was, “I want allllll of this” – ALL of the items in the pink section.  Oye. LOL

I know for certain I’m going to get her a cardboard playhouse – the kind the kids can color themselves with markers, to replace the beat up carseat box she’s been using since we had to buy a new car seat after our accident back in April.  And, based on her reaction to her cousin’s doll house (a HUGE Dora doll house, to which she let out a very excited squeal at the site of it), we’ll probably get her some sort of doll house, too, along with maybe a barbie doll (just one to start, since its hair will likely be a matted mess before Spring), or some other small dolls to use in it.  I thought about maybe getting a play set for some of her baby dolls, but I may save that for next year.  Or maybe the doll house for next year… I haven’t quite decided yet.

I do know we need to go through her toy boxes and eliminate a bunch of old toys that she would probably care less if they were to disappear, to make room for the new stuff.

I also think I may want to get her some kind of art easle, since she likes to use the ones at school and at her grandmother’s house.

Decisions, decisions… *sigh*

First we went to a party store, where she got her daughter’s Care Bear outfit.  We were able to find a cheap ladybug ensemble (wings & hairband with fuzzy antanea) for the Kiddo.  Then we went to W@l-M@rt to look for the clothes but had no luck there.  We then went to K0hl’s, where I found a pair of black pants & shirt that she could wear normally at school (double-duty, yeah!), which would work fine for her ladybug outfit.

Now she’s pretty much all set for Halloween, I just need to hide the ladybug wings to keep her from ruining them until Halloween.. after that she can wear them as often as she likes.