week ending september 30, 2007:

Week ending September 30, 2007: This week we had the kids’ birthday party. I spent weeks getting the house ready for the party including pressure washing, wiping baseboards, and cleaning everything in the china cabinet. It is the only time of the year when everything in the house is clean all at the same time, but of course the kids don’t care a lick about how clean the house is. Grammy Carole and I spent almost all day Saturday baking and decorating two cakes. It took over an hour to mix and tint 9 different colors of icing before we even started the decorating. At least this year we managed to not break any of the cakes (like I did last year). The party didn’t start until 4pm on Sunday, so Sunday school was a nice distraction, and then we had to eat lunch, and then we took the kids to pick up the balloons, and then we spent an hour hanging streamers and other decorations. After that the kids started asking “when are people going to start coming here and bringing me presents?”, so we killed some time by setting up Daddy’s new hammock, and letting the kids open one present. As people started to arrive Chloe was really disappointed that she couldn’t open the gifts right away. Not explaining the order of the party events further in advance was poor planning on my part. After a while the kids settled into playing with 2 of their cousins and had a great time swinging on the swings and bouncing on the trampoline. I did some face painting on the kids. I’d been practicing all week on Alex and Chloe. For the first couple of days they thought getting their faces painted was great, but today Alex decided he didn’t even want to have his painted. Two of Chloe’s balloons escaped during dinner and she was really upset even though she had three left. She’s lost balloons before and not been particularly upset. Maybe the anxiety of waiting all day for her party wore her out. Anyway, it wasn’t long before it was time to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cakes, and then we did a piñata, and then opened presents, so she had plenty of other things to think about besides the balloons. All told the party went very well. We only invited family to the party because the kids didn’t ask to invite their friends and the family group is usually 24-30, but I think next year we’ll be able to handle inviting the whole family and some friends. Here are the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/4thBday2007

One other interesting story from the party involved my friend Claudine. Alex and Chloe don’t see Claudine very often (maybe 3 or 4 times a year) and Alex is usually very shy around Claudine, so much so that he will hardly say a word. Well this time Claudine was the first to arrive at the party and Alex ran right up to her and said “Look at my birthday ribbon! Do you want to see my cake? It is Lightning McQueen!”. She commented how good it was to hear Alex talking so much and I realized that she is at least the 3rd person to say that in a week and a half. Perhaps going to school has allowed Alex to practice talking with people he doesn’t know very well and this has given him confidence. Or maybe just being a little bit older has caused the change. Whatever the reason, I’m glad to see him making strides!