Yesterday was Hayley's 3rd birthday! All the kids were excited. Except for my birthday in August (kind of a "boring" birthday as far as the kids are concerned), we've had a birthday drought for a long time! (All the kid's birthdays are concentrated in the fall/winter.)
Back to the birthday girl... yesterday morning I took her (and Courtney) to Toys R Us to pick out a toy with some birthday money she received. Because it was her birthday, they even gave her a balloon. When I told Courtney where we were going, she immediately burst into tears because she didn't get to pick out a new toy. (Courtney has a very hard time dealing with jealousy and feeling left out when she perceives that other kids are getting something she doesn't or winning a game that she's not, etc.) Courtney finally stopped crying when Hayley agreed to let her help choose the new toy.
A big toy store can be quite overwhelming for a little 3-year-old girl! So many choices! Everywhere she looked, she would say, "I want that!" We finally went with a couple of proven favorites around our house -- My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop.
The girls had fun all afternoon playing with the new toys (Hannah joined right in when she got home from school).
We got the Hello Kitty cake made during the afternoon. It was actually quite easy -- one of the easiest cakes I've done, I think. I always add the birthday kid's name and age somewhere on the cake and thought it ended up looking a little funny on this one (since the Hello Kitty design doesn't include a mouth), but the most important thing was that Hayley loved it. (I have learned to let go of some of my perfection when it comes to things like this because the kids don't notice the flaws and they don't care if it's not perfect!)
Hannah burst into tears the minute she came home from school and saw the cake (we had a hard time with tears yesterday!). She was upset because she apparently really wanted to help me make the cake (which I didn't know) and I did it while she was gone to school.
We had to eat an early dinner (Hayley's choice of homemade macaroni and cheese) because McKay has baseball practice. He missed last week's first practice because of rain. As we left the house, I made some comment about how it wasn’t supposed to rain today and it was nice and sunny outside. As we drove over to the YMCA, however, I noticed that all of a sudden the clouds were getting quite dark and we could hear some thunder as we pulled up. We made it out to the field to talk briefly to the coach and found out that there had been some lightning already, so there could be no practice for at least 15 minutes. We sat in the van to wait, but the thunder and lightning continued and then the rain started pouring down, so there was no practice again. McKay was SO disappointed --he really wants to play baseball!
After Daddy made it home from work, it was time for presents and cake.
Hayley was excited to open her presents -- and the girls could hardly stand it that they couldn't do it for her. All three girls just squealed when they saw the big "Littlest Pet Shop" playground playset -- they all enjoy playing with the little pets. She seemed really excited about her presents and it was all we could do to pull them away for cake and ice cream because they wanted to start playing with the new toys.
(McKay is going to be mad at me for including this next part, but I'm going to anyway!) McKay said he wanted to light the candles on Hayley's cake all by himself, so we let him try. He really hasn't had much experience lighting matches for campfires or whatever. He had a hard time getting the match to light at first, and then while trying to light the first candle, he held the match pointed down, so the flames came right up to his fingers quickly. He instinctively dropped the burning match onto the table, which we all hurried to blow out. So he tried again, after I explained how he needed to hold the match pointing up. He managed to get all three candles lit, but then when he blew out the match, he also blew out the candles at the same time! So we went for a third try. This time, as he tried to light the second candle, he held his fingers too close to the already lit first candle, got burned a little, and again dropped the burning match on the table. By that point, he was in tears (more tears!) and said he is never going to light a match again. I felt bad for him – I guess sometimes we put too much pressure on him and expect him to know how to do certain things when we really haven’t taught him how to do it properly in the first place.
When it was finally time to blow out the candles, Hannah and Courtney again could hardly contain themselves to keep from helping her. After several blows, Hayley got one candle out, then another, and then she started working on the last one. She was having some trouble, so she finally let the girls help her finish it off.
As soon as the cake was eaten, the kids raced back over to open up the new toys. Even McKay couldn't resist the Littlest Pet Shop playground!
And I learned that when I have to compete with new toys to try get kids to go to bed, the new toys have a definite edge. :-)
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