Happy Birthday Sydney!

Just before finally crawling into bed around 3:30am Friday morning, Spencer got Sydney's binky out of her bed and I replaced it with a present from the "binky fairy." We woke up at about 4:30am to Sydney crying. Spencer went in to help her, and she was crying because she couldn't find her bink. I went in and told her the binky fairy came and showed her the present sitting on her night stand. She opened it and was really excited about her new blanket and teddy bear, and went right back to sleep. Phew!

Sydney requested a Pinkalicious birthday party with a cat cake, so we woke up early this morning to sneak in some last minute preparations (i.e. things we were too tired to do last night) before her friends arrived. As Shawn was ready to eat about 30 minutes into the party, I had to rely heavily on Spencer to pull this off. Thank goodness he took the day off- he was a champion! I was also grateful to have our sweet neighbors Louise and Ann Marie there to help entertain Shawn and help with the kids.

The girls started off by making pink bracelets.

Emmy

Audra

Taylor

Jasmin

Mia & Bella

Then they headed outside for a scavenger hunt to find a treasure box filled with star wands that look like the one Pinkalicious has in the book.

Next they ate pink treats while I read Pinkalicious. I spent a decent amount of time last night making pink treats, but it turned out that the store bought frosted animal crackers were the clear favorite. Then they decorated pre-frosted "pink" cupcakes (I use quotations as they were actually orange since we added red food coloring to a yellow cake mix... oops!). I knew this activity would be messy, but I didn't anticipate just how messy it would get.

While Sydney opened presents and I fed Shawn, Louise swept about a billion pink sprinkles off of our floor. Then we all gathered around the cake and sang Happy Birthday.

Again, I baked and frosted this cake after we got home from the Marine Ball the night before, so it was pretty late when I was finally getting it finished. Just as I was getting ready to clean out my dark pink frosting bag, I realized I had actually written "Happy Birthay Sydney." Blast. Thankfully I was able to scrape off the "ay" and fix it.

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Did it all by herself this year :)

At her request, we served the cake with green ice cream. My kind of girl.

Shawn, wearing size 6 month pants! Chunk!!

After the party, Syd opened a few more presents from Grandparents. With all of her presents, she amassed a large amount of art supplies, books, and Play-doh... lots to keep us busy!

Several weeks ago, Sydney asked if we could ride the ferris wheel in American Village. We can see it from our house and drive by it pretty frequently. We told her we could ride it on her birthday, so off we went!

It went pretty slowly, taking about 15 minutes to go around once. Spencer's not a fan of heights, and even I got a little nervous at how windy it was at the top.

After our ride, we headed over to Camp Foster to try to get into the free Sesame Street Live show, but learned when we got there that it was actually on Kadena! We thought for sure we would be too late as traffic into Kadena was terrible. We considered just forgetting about the whole thing, but eventually decided it was still worth a shot. We pulled in about 20 minutes before the show, and thankfully the line outside didn't look too long. Spencer dropped me off to stand in line while he found parking, and when I got there I asked the people in front of me if we needed tickets for the show. They said yes, but just then one of the volunteers was walking by and asked me if I needed tickets. I said yes and he said, "How many?" Next thing I knew I had 3 tickets in my hand. I was so excited it worked out!

Sydney informed me that she did not like the purple guy.

The show was cute and they sang some fun songs, but highlight of the whole thing was definitely the cool Elmo spinners they passed out before the show.

Afterwards we went out for some udon and tempura, then came back home to play outside for a bit before watching Tangled.

During the movie Syd opened a few presents from me and Spencer (I probably should have just saved some of them for Christmas gifts), then it was off to bed. What a crazy and fun-filled day! I was relieved that Syd didn't even cry about not having her bink when she went to bed, although she did ask about it several times. Just as I suspected, she would not take a nap yesterday. And somehow with no nap, she still comes into our room at like 6:30 am every morning. What's up with that?

Marine Ball

On Thursday night, Spencer and I attended one of many Marine Balls taking place this month to commemorate the 236th birthday of the Marine Corp. There was a bit of drama in our preparations. The attire for Spencer's Dental Corp was dress whites, so he got his uniform dry cleaned and bought all his extra pins and such to show he's a Lieutenant instead of an Ensign. Well, he called me after a meeting he had on Wednesday, and when I said, "How's you're day going?" his response was, "Terrible. I just found out they changed the uniform for the ball tomorrow to dress blues." He was given the rest of the day off to run around to get his uniform ready- he had to beg a tailor (and give a heavy tip!) to do a rush job to sew an extra strip on his sleeves, had to pay for an express dry cleaning, and had to run around to buy the medals and pins he needed. What a pain! Thankfully he was able to get it all taken care of.

Our sweet neighbor Jess watched our kids for us (we watched theirs last week when they went to the Navy ball). This was our first date since Shawn was born.

The ceremony was full of tradition- standing for colors and the National Anthem, playing of the Marine Hymn, bringing in the ginormous cake, the first piece of cake being passed from the oldest to the youngest Marine in the room.

The 3rd Dental Battalion.

It was neat to be part of this event, and fun to get to know people from Spencer's work a little better. We stuck around to dance to a few songs- I basically forced him to the dance floor when Don't Stop Believing Came On, and made him stay for Moves Like Jagger (I can't get enough of Maroon 5 lately). Then we headed home for a LONG night of birthday party preparations. We were up until 3am!

Happy Halloween!

This year, Sydney has been sooo excited for Halloween. She's been asking about trick-or-treating for weeks, so it was fun to show her the calendar today so she could see Halloween was finally here! Once she got up from her afternoon nap, she was ready to go. Unfortunately we still had to wait a few hours before it was time to get dressed up and head out the door.

Sneaking in a very messy pre-dinner treat, courtesy of our neighbor, Miss Krimp.

I found Sydney's costume on eBay for like $10. When she tried it on at first, it was WAY too short, so I thought I'd just have her wear the pinafore with a different dress. Then I saw that the little blue dress actually had a 3 inch hem on it, so once I ripped that out it was perfect!

Everyone thought she was Alice in Wonderland... and rightfully so. She would make an adorable Alice. But with all of us together, we were Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Granted, someone did still think we were Alice in Wonderland and three mice. Oh well, we tried.

The first two doors we went to were the Coat's and the Terpstra's... neighbors that we see on a pretty regular basis. So I was kind of surprised when Syd was afraid to say "Trick-or-treat!" Thankfully, she said it for all of the other doors we went to. And sometimes after she got the candy and we would prompt her with, "What do you say?" she would be like, "I already said 'Thank you.'" Shawn fell asleep in Spencer's arms, and after a while Syd was saying her shoes were starting to hurt her feet. We lasted about an hour, and then we told her it was our turn to go back home to pass out candy. Even though I could tell that candy bag was heavy, she refused to let us hold it for her.

We sat outside for a bit, and she ate a few pieces of candy while we waited for trick-or-treaters to come. About 4 kids came by before I took her in to take a tub. After that, Spencer said there was hardly anyone in the last hour and a half. Next year I think we'll just leave the bowl out with a sign when we're gone so we aren't stuck with tons of candy.

Now only 4 days until Sydney's birthday! I think this will be her best week ever... until the binky fairy comes. Still nervous about how that's going to go down :)

Sunabe Baba Park

Although Sydney can be quite the independent little girl, she can also be kind of a weenie. Take for example a typical experience at a park. She would generally want me to push her on the swings for like 5 hours, then maybe go down one of the smallest slides there, and she'd be good to go. Well, my neighbor Jess invited us to join a playgroup at Sunabe Baba Park on Wednesday, and feeling a pull to get out and do more fun stuff during the week, I took her up on it.

The park was really cute, but unfortunately we got there just after a day care/preschool group arrived. There were tons of kids! Sydney enjoyed taking a little ride on this horse thing:

All the pedals were broken so it had to be pushed in a circle.

So I took pictures while that little boy did all the work.

Thank goodness Jess was there for the jungle gym. I was holding Shawn in the Bjorn and couldn't really get in there to help Syd, who didn't dare crossing those precarious ropes on her own. Nor did she want to go down the roller slide by herself, but she was willing to go down it once on Jess's lap.

And even then it looked like she was holding on for dear life.

Jess's 2 year old daughter Claire, on the other hand, was quite the brave little girl- running around, climbing ropes, and going down big slides all by herself.

I couldn't help but be proud of my timid girl when she at least attempted to climb up some ropes.

Hooray!!

She climbed up about halfway, then came back down when the handles widened and she couldn't hold onto both of them anymore. Trying to build her confidence, I gave her a high five and complimented her on how high she'd climbed. A few minutes later she tried again, with the same result. On attempt #3, I told her to just hold onto one handle with both hands and keep climbing. With just enough support to ensure her I wouldn't let her fall, she climbed all the way to the platform. Victory! She was so excited that she did it "by herself." I love seeing her face when she is proud of herself. Makes me proud to be her Mom.

Not that I'm the most brave person now, but I remember being a pretty big weenie when I was a kid too. I was always scared of roller coasters, so my Mom would go on some lame amusement park ride with me while the rest of my family partied on the high thrill rides. Then she got tired of that and forced me to ride the Corkscrew with her at Geauga Lake when I was around 8 years old. I remember crying in line and keeping my eyes closed during the whole ride... but I totally loved it. That marked the beginning of many crazy roller coaster rides, courtesy of Geauga Lake and Cedar Point. Hopefully my Sydney will have a change of heart too and realize how much fun a playground can be!

PJs by Daddy

There have been a few nights in the past few weeks that I've been gone and Spencer's put Sydney to bed himself. If none of her usual pj's were in her drawer- because they were either dirty or still sitting in a basket full of folded clean clothes at the end of our bed- he improvised on what she wore to sleep. That made for some laughs for me in the morning :)

Wait for it, wait for it....

Surprise!

On a separate note, she got those window clings in an awesome Halloween bucket from a mystery neighbor who "Boo-ed" us, and they provided hours of entertainment. Who knew repeatedly sticking something to the window, then taking it off again could be so much fun?

Getting Big

Shawn's two month check-up was a success. In true chatterbox form, Sydney asked me about a billion questions (most of which she already knew the answer to) and talked to everyone who came in the room as if they were there to talk to her.

I was excited to see just how big Shawn has gotten. His official stats were:

Weight: 13 lbs. 5 oz. (67th percentile)

Height: 25 in. (95th percentile!)

Head circumference: 41 cm (60th percentile)

I was kind of surprised that he was only in the 67th percentile for weight... there must be some awfully chunky babies out there. He's so tall that I already need to adjust the shoulder straps in his car seat to the top opening.

He did great while the Dr. did her exam, but unfortunately he I felt asleep in my arms while we were waiting for the corpsman to come in to do the shots. Poor thing was so tired, only to be awakened by me laying him on the crunchy exam table paper, then getting 3 shots in his chunky thighs. That delayed cry after getting poked always makes me so sad. Thankfully he calmed down pretty quickly after I picked him up and snuggled him a bit.

He was also pacified by sucking on his hands... he's been doing that quite a bit lately. At one point he was just sucking his thumb.