To put it bluntly, toddlers are not graceful.  They’re still working out that thing called balance, and haven’t mastered how to regain one’s balance if they start to lose it.  Hell, I’m an adult and I still haven’t quite figured that one out yet.  So, take some twirling in circles,  and throw good ol’ gravity into the mix?  And a nearby, immobile, hard object? Well, that is just a recipe for disaster.

Forehead, meet the dresser handle.  Dresser handle, meet the forehead.

There was much blood, and much crying (from both the Kiddo AND me).

There was a three hour visit to the emergency room, and three or four stitches.  And then a popsicle and a small puppy finger puppet (from the doctor) for being such a trooper!  She didn’t cry during the stitches at all, and held still just like we asked her to do.  Yay for topical anesthetic, and yay for a very calm little girl!  And a super doctor and nurse, to boot.  And thanks to her grandma for sitting with us at the ER in sheer boredom waiting those long three hours, helping me keep the Kiddo entertained.

I am so spent.  I hope to never have to repeat what happened today ever again.  But I imagine that is just wishful thinking… if she inherited my clutziness, and can’t find her gracefulness, well, I fear something like this will probably happen at some point again, but hopefully in the way way distant future.  But I can still hope that distant future never comes and she turns out to be as graceful as a swan, right?  One can dream…

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!

So she pouts and walks away – toward her daddy’s office.  I immediately knew what she was intending on doing, and sure enough, I hear her dad tell her no also.  The only difference is that he sweetens the sting a little by telling her she can have them AFTER dinner (whereas that thought didn’t even occur to me).

Just as dinner is about done he comes out and relays their conversation – when she asked him if she could have the chips, he asked her in turn, “Did mommy already tell you no?”, to which she answers, “No.”  Then he says he asked her again, adding something to the effect of  ”I’m pretty sure I heard her tell you no,” to which she quietly says “yes” with another pout.

So not only is she trying out the fine art of asking the other parent when the first one says no, she’s also fibbing to try to get her way.   Thank goodness she isn’t very good at either yet. LOL

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…

Sometime in the middle of the night, the Kiddo came into our room and got into bed on my side.  I was aware of this, because when she first got in bed, she laid completely ON me.   I was on my back, and she climbed right up, laid down on me and put her cheek against mine and we dozed like that for about ten minutes I guess, until her weight started to bother me being on my chest like that.

I think she came into our room because I had her humidifier on in her room for her stuffy nose, and she’d gotten cold (her little toesies were icicles).  After I’d had enough of 35 lbs on my chest I made the dumb mistake of having her lay to  my left on the bed, which is on the edge of the bed, thinking in a few minutes I’d take her back to her room for the rest of the night.

Har har.  I feel fast asleep snuggled up with her, and she pretty much stuck right next to me all night… until at like 6:40 a.m., she rolled off the bed and landed between the bed and my nightstand. 

Yep, that woke both me and my husband right up.  She was crying right away and crawled right back up into bed and sat in my lap while I felt around her head for any huge lumps, while my husband got up and turned on the bathroom light so we could check her visually and make sure she wasn’t bleeding profusely somewhere.

She must not have bumped too hard as I couldn’t even find a bump and there were no scratches or anything, thankfully.  Boy did I feel like dirt and completely stupid, but was extremely thankful she was more or less only startled from the fall.  It could have been really bad because there is only like eight or nine inches of space between the bed and my nightstand… so, yeah. EEK!

Lesson learned, next time she’s going between my husband and I regardless of whether I actually plan on taking her back to her own bed and follow through with it or end up falling asleep.  No sense risking a potential disaster with another fall from our bed, since this is not the first, nor I doubt the last time she’ll come crawling into our bed in the middle of the night.

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…

I’m just glad her hair is finally long enough to do stuff like this.  She was pretty much bald / peach fuzzy her entire first year, then it just started growing out a little bit during her second year and by Halloween of that year we could *just* put in itty bitty piggy tails.  Those were so cute, but she wouldn’t leave them in.

Now her hair is long enough that most of it can go into piggy tails – but not quite all, some from the front and the very bottom of her head still isn’t long enough to reach.  I am hoping as she ages her hair will start growing faster, like mine.  I dyed my hair light red two weeks ago, (the color on the box is actually strawberry blonde, but my hair is dark so it doesn’t turn out like the color on the box), and already I have dark roots that are probably about 1/16″ long.  Suffice to say, Easter 2007 I had my hair cut to above my shoulders, and have not trimmed it since, and it is already back half-way down my back again.

Anyway.  It seems like it has taken forever but we can actually start doing stuff with her hair, and thankfully she is also wanting to let me do stuff with her hair, whereas before she’d have any pony or pig tails or barrettes out within an hour.  This is one part of her growing up that I like!  Now I just have to hope that she got at least a little bit of body, wave or slight curl to her hair from her dad, because my hair is stick straight and I hate it.  Right now her hair is mostly straight but flips up at the ends, so I can still have some hope…

I’m kind of bummed a little that it’s happening on a night we already had plans for and we won’t also get our weekend night without the Kiddo, but oh well.  It does mean we’ll probably get to sleep an extra ten minutes tomorrow morning before getting up to get ready for work. Whee.