What a month. We crammed at least 30 days of stuff into 28 days. Since it is February, that means that the birthday season is upon us. All of Ellen and Phoebe's friends (and Ellen and Phoebe for that matter) have their birthdays in February and early March. So we had at least 1 party per weekend, and for Ellen and Phoebe's combined party, there were 2 that weekend.
To get the ball rolling, I took the girls to the Children's Museum to give Jada a rest the first weekend of the month since she was sick. We were hoping to see the puppet show, but the puppeteer couldn't make it. So we played in all the other areas instead. We started in the stage and dress up area where Phoebe sang her "ABC" song while Ellen danced. Then we spent quite a long time in the "forest" play area where Phoebe slept in the house, and Ellen slept in the castle. I got lucky and played Rip van Winkle leaning up against a tree.
Later in the week Jada and I went out together to the Cycle Oregon kick off party. The route was too good to pass up this year. It met all of my requirements for the week long ride: loop route, area I haven't ridden before, lots of climbing, century options. After debating it with myself for a couple weeks, I finally decided to go for it. They haven't unveiled the weekend ride yet, but Jada and I are planning on doing that one together again this year which will be followed immediately by the LiveStrong ride which they moved up from September 24 to July 30th, which means we'll get to spend our 6th anniversary together all day. So we've got that going for us.
That was just one of the many things that we did this month. The first birthday party of the month caught us off guard. We went to take Ellen and Phoebe and expected to hang out and help out, but we were greeted at the door with, "you can just drop them off if you like. We'll see you later." We didn't know what to do with ourselves. We ended up doing errands. Ellen described it as a "StarWars" party because they had StarWars plates and decorations. The girls had a great time running around the yard. It was hard to get them to leave.
The girls were excited for Valentine's day too. Ellen kept making up her own cards and hiding them for us to find. She made Valentine cards on her "E" paper pad and hid it under our pillows. Mine said "DADY A VALTIN FOR DADY", Jada's said "I love u, momy".
Ellen's birthday was on a Thursday this year, so she didn't have school that day. However, in the morning, Jada's friend hosted a tea party for both Ellen and Phoebe. The party consisted of an adorable "ladybug" tea set, apple juice to drink, a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut into many pieces, and tiny cookies. There were two 3 year olds and two five year olds. They took turns pouring the apple juice into the tea cups and the food rarely made it to the plates from the serving dishes. The food was gone quickly. At the end of the tea party, Meryl washed up the tea set, placed it back into the box, and gave it to the girls for their birthday present. We had Grandma and Papa over for Ellen's birthday dinner. We decided to meet out at Red Robin. Ellen didn't want them to sing to her though after witnessing it at another table. We didn't tell them it was her birthday anyway since we had cake at home. I almost destroyed the cake too. Jada had set them out on the stove the night before to cool, but I was going to make oatmeal for Ellen's birthday breakfast. I turned on the burner, and ran down to get the mail since we hadn't picked it up the night before, just in case there was a card for Ellen. When I came back, there was a burning smell in the house. I had accidentally turned on the wrong burner, and one of the parts of the cake was ruined. Luckily, Jada was able to shape the other part she had made into a heart. It was just smaller than she had originally planned.
That weekend we had another party for one of their friends. We had noticed the day before that the clothes that we had gotten Ellen at the beginning of the school year were getting too small. Since the party we were going to was in Wilsonville, we decided to make a day of it and head to the outlet malls in Woodburn to pick up some new clothes. We actually found t-shirts at the Gap that looked like real little girl t-shirts instead of inappropriate older girl "clothes". Too many unflattering trends trickle down to children's clothes especially for girls. (what's up with the sleeves that are too long to be a tank top, but not actually long enough to be short sleeves?) Boys trends seem to stay the same...jeans, shirts with trucks or camouflage or sports figures. We buy a lot of boy clothes for Ellen. The issue with the styles for girls' clothes is going to be a constant source of irritation for me as they get older, I'm sure. I'm already turning into Dana Carvey's crotchety old man character. We also had the Godparent dinner that weekend. Ellen helped me make pizza again. Currently she is doing the apprentice chef duties of stirring in the ingredients, smoothing out dough into the smaller pizza pan (my 10" spring form pan broke this time. I was heartbroken. I've been using that one for years.), and laying out the cheese and toppings on the smaller pizza. I'm hoping to move her up to cheese cutting and then helping with the dough when she gets stronger.
We ended up with decent weather for our Nature Park hike. We had twelve 3, 4, and 5 year olds out for an hour hike. It was a little chilly, but it was dry. I think the girls and boys had fun. We got to see a great horned owl up in the tree top. The guide brought a scope so we could see it more clearly. Ellen got to see it. Phoebe may have seen it, but she was having trouble closing the correct eye to see through the scope. It looked like she finally did it though eventually. I brought a jog stroller along just in case any of the littler kids got tired, but they all trooped through with the thought of cupcakes awaiting them at the end of the trail. Jada had stayed behind to setup the room and get the snacks ready. We had everyone decorate water bottles while enjoying some trail mix. Then we had the cupcakes. We followed that up with the making of crowns. Before we knew it, it was time to start cleaning up. The girls chose to donate paperback books to the SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) program which provides books to school children who otherwise might not have that experience. They collected 29 books this year. We'd like to thank everyone for the generous gifts that will be donated in memory of Ellen and Phoebe's little friend Dylan again this year.
As for Ellen herself, you may recall in our last installment that Ellen had played Scrabble Jr. Well, we played it again this month and quite surprised me. We played the normal side after she got bored with the Junior side. I started us off with "bugs" which was all my letters could do. Then after a couple more times of me helping her come up with words from her set, she asked if she could do rabbit. I said, "sure, if you have the letters". Sure enough, she had them, and she put them down on the board. The only thing I helped her with was putting two "b's" in it using the starting word "bugs". A little later, I was trying to decide what to put out, and she suggested "toy" since I had an "o" and a "y" with "t" already on the board. Needless to say, she was beating me. Ellen has rediscovered her tape player this month. Not for music though. Jada has been bringing home the little books on tape that she has at school for Ellen to listen to. She spends a lot of time in her room doing that. It reminds me of when we were little with our Fisher Price record player and our StarWars story album. Ellen has been figuring out how to spell a lot on her own. I mentioned the valentine's she wrote without any help. She also did all the valentines for her class, and wrote out the thank you notes for her birthday. The biggest achievement is Ellen made it the entire month of February without wetting her bed over night. In fact, halfway through the month she was confident enough to remove her safety net - the wet pad that we had been keeping under her.
Phoebe started pre-school this month and is loving it. She goes 2 days a week at the same place the Ellen goes. She's exhausted by the end of those days, but on the off days she hadn't been napping all that well already. When she does nap, though, she naps hard. Her favorite lunch time food continues to be peanut butter and jelly. She could eat it every day of the week if we let her. She also loves tomatoes. However, she does still exert her iron will at many opportunities. The most frustrating is in the realm of potty training, though she has started at least pooping in the potty again. And she will pee in the potty when we have her go in there. It's just difficult to get her to go in there. She has some good days when we put her in the panties....and then there are the bad days. We're going to see what we can do about better enticement next month. A big achievement in hair happened this month too. Phoebe got her first braids. She thought that was the coolest.
'til next time.
Journal Entry: March 5, 2006