Afton's THIRD Birthday

Ever since Afton's 2-year-old birthday she has been a little obsessed with birthdays. We often blew out candles on "cupcakes" or anything we could pretend were cake or cupcakes. She sang happy birthday nearly every day and she talked about every aspect of birthdays and birthday parties ALL THE TIME!

So needless to say we were all pretty excited about her birthday in February. She wanted a "dress up party" and "green frosting, strawberry cupcakes". However, when we were at the store picking out the cake and frosting she, thankfully, settled for the purple frosting she saw and after that didn't much care about the cake part.

Her birthday was on a Wednesday this year and Peter was able to take a grace day from school in the morning so that we could celebrate as a family. Leading up to Afton's birthday, she had noticed the huge mylar number balloons that lined an aisle at our local grocery store. The ones they had on display were all pink, purple, or blue so I sent Pete to the store after Afton had fallen asleep to get a pink or purple 3. Of course, they only had gold or silver so we settled for a big silver one and a couple pink and purple smaller balloons. Afton is no dummy, she knows birthdays don't count without balloons.

I was so excited to give Afton our presents because I had been working on sewing her a doorway puppet theater for a couple of weeks. I would work on it every night after she went to bed, and we ordered some cute puppets from Amazon. She has been into doing puppet shows for about 6 months leading up to her birthday but we always just made the puppets out of stuffed animals or little stick animals we made. So I was really excited about this gift. I also picked out a block puzzle of princesses and fairies and then bought some of her favorite songs and burned them onto a CD for the car (included Sound of Music songs, Cinderella songs, Snow white songs, and the new Peanuts Movie dancing song).

She woke up so excited and we opened her presents right away while (baby) Peter was still sleeping. Then we went to Kneader's and had breakfast there because days earlier we stopped in to grab a loaf of bread and she told me all about their french toast which was her FAVORITE that she ate with Olivia (which is funny that she remembered because we were at an entirely different location of Kneader's and when she was there with Olivia it was more than a month previous...the memory of this girl!)

After a lovely breakfast we went to a park and played on the playground for a bit. The highlight was having dad with us, for sure! We played with her toys for the rest of the day and then had her favorite meal for dinner (chicken, rice, and broccoli casserole).

I was torn about doing a cake because I knew we were going to have a party that weekend and I didn't want to make a whole cake since Afton doesn't really like cake all that much and we try not to eat sweets on week days. But I knew she would need to blow out candles on her birthday! Luckily, one of Pete's classmates was SO sweet and remembered that she shared a birthday with Afton. She had made a small little cake and gave it to Pete when she saw him at school that afternoon. It was beyond perfect. We put some candles in the little cake and had a few bites with ice cream (which is really Afton's favorite).

On Saturday, we had some family over for a little "dress up" party, per Afton's request. We had a big dress up station (which I forgot to take a picture of) and everyone was good sports about putting something on. The kids made a little craft and we had some brunch. Then Afton opened presents and was completely spoiled! After presents I suggested we do cupcakes and ice cream to which Afton protested and cried! I had no idea why she would protest so I thought for a moment and remembered that we had talked about having a little dance party. So I asked if that is what she wanted and she nodded yes and then stopped crying. She went to change into her "dance party" dress. We danced to one song and then she was ready for cupcakes. I thought it was so funny that she was so distraught thinking we skipped the dance party, since apparently she had already thought about the costume change she would have. SO FUNNY!

(Also at the party, but not pictured, was great Aunt Katie Sundwall and baby Peter)

Afton has such wonderful grandparents! Mimi and Grandpa took her on a special date to the aquarium (with Aunt Olivia and Aunt Jessica) and then to Build-A-Bear and shopping for a new dress at the mall. She had the time of her life!

Afton's Grandma and Grandpa Millar gave her this little microphone (along with other gifts) that she uses daily to put on shows. She has to turn the lights low and stand on the coffee table as her "stage." And, of course, she completes her shows with multiple costume changes

We LOVE our little 3-year-old and LOVED celebrating her birth! She has made our lives so rich!

8 and 9 months with Little Man

I am kicking myself for not writing this post earlier because I have surely forgotten little things about Peter in this stage. But there is nothing I can do now. So here is a glimpse of things I remember from Peter at 8 and 9 months of age (mostly 9 months since that is more recent).

-Peter now has 7 teeth. It was a few rough weeks of teething before he was 9 months. He was SO grumpy and just gnawing on EVERYTHING. I kept thinking they would poke through any day but they took their sweet time. He cut two more on the top and a third tooth on the bottom. I love when they aren't even for some reason. Afton had three on the bottom until after she was a year old and I just loved it. Peter's teeth are some of his most prominent and memorable features. Heart-eyes emojis. Always.

-Peter LOVES his Daddy and lights up when he comes home. While he is a HUGE mama's boy and prefers me to anyone else most of the time, seeing his dad right when he comes home is easily the happiest time of the day for Peter. 

-At Peter's 9 month appointment with the Pediatrician we brought up the fact that he was not babbling with consonants. Everything he did was either blowing raspberries (bubbles) or a squeal. He even mimicked saying a drawn out "hi" a few times but would never babble using M, D, B, etc. Since this is typically a 6-month milestone, our pediatrician thought it would be a good idea to just have his hearing checked, even though we didn't think he seemed to have any problems hearing (he has always been a light sleeper being bothered by even the smallest sound. And he also turned toward sounds without an issue). So we had an audiology appointment on Afton's birthday and what would you know Peter literally started babbling THAT DAY with D and G sounds. He has progressed to other consonants and has been doing that for a while. He just wanted to take his sweet time. Silly guy. (The hearing results came back normal).

-Peter started and mastered crawling and going from tummy to sitting up (and vice versa) during this time.  He LOVES to be chased while crawling and has gotten quite fast. He likes to pull himself up to his knees on things but not quite to his feet yet.

-Peter loves hanging upside down. After I feed him he will throw his head back and just lay like that.
-Peter loves to be part of a joke. When others are laughing or just conversing he will give a hearty, fake laugh just so you know he is part of the conversation, too. It's pretty great.  He loves to really laugh and when you tickle him he will bury his head and laugh really hard. This is a nice change because for awhile there he mostly just gave courtesy laughs when you tried to play with him-which was funny but not as fun.

-Peter likes to play shy with other people. This is a great improvement from his intense stranger danger phase he went through. Now he just lowers his head and then slowly looks up from the tops of his eyes and then quickly looks away again. He will still cry sometimes if people he doesn't know give him too much attention. I am so surprised by his natural coyness.

-Peter has found a favorite spot within the little playhouse Grandma Rita made. He crawls in and out and just hangs out in there. I think he enjoys the solitary atmosphere after hanging out with us chatty girls all day. It's hilarious how much he enjoys just hanging out in there alone.

-Peter can DOWN the solid food. Some days he feels like a bottomless pit that I can never feed enough. If he is grumpy, a sure way to make him happy is to put him in front of food he can feed himself. While he will eat multiple jars of baby food he likes to have something to feed himself as well. His new favorite thing he discovered during these months are clementine oranges. He will eat 2-3 of those in one sitting along with other food.

-Graduated from the infant bath to the big tub!

-Now that he is mobile, I have to watch him SO close because he has such laser focus and can find the tiniest thing to put in his mouth. I am sure he has swallowed way more than he should of non-food items but at this point if it's not toxic or big enough for him to choke on I just call it good. We have only had 1 or 2 close calls when I thought I was going to have to do the Heimlich.  It's a constant battle.
-Took a liking to "Mr. Monks" (Afton and I named him) the sock monkey my sister, Amy, made. He crawls around and finds him throughout the day and then gives him kisses and just holds on to him. I think this is so fun because he used to stare at that monkey when he was a newborn. No other stuffed animals interested him as much as this one. It must be something about those button eyes.