The Birthday Party!

Last Thursday Amana had a birthday party with friends for the first time. It ended up being a really great day! We painted sun catchers in the shape of ponies (actually, they were unicorns with the horns broken off!), each girl beaded her own bracelet with a horsie charm, and then we made our own pizzas. It was fun to see Amana interact with her friends. They played well together between activities. Amana received a lot of really nice gifts. One favorite was a pink and purple stick unicorn. Upon opening it, she exclaimed, "I've always wanted one of these!" She slept with it that night! She also got a "build your own build a bear", which should actually be called, "Mom builds me my own build a bear"! We worked on it today. I didn't feel like I'd done a very good job with it, but Amana thougth it was great. She said, "OOO, mommy! It's Perfect!" She named the bear Karena and she loves it...and she's sleeping with it tonight!





Lige is going out of town tomorrow evening, so he's taking some time off in the afternoon to celebrate Amana's actual birthday. Amana has a dentist appointment, which most of us would hate anytime, let alone on our birthday. Amana, however, thinks it's the best thing ever. She can't wait. After the dentist, we're going to take her to get her ears pierced. I was five when I got mine pierced, so this is kind of special to me. She's excited now, but we'll see how she is tomorrow...she might get there and say no way! Then we'll go to Applebee's for a birthday dinner. We asked her where she wanted to go, and Amana said she wanted to go to the place with the big red tomato. We finally understood it to be Applebee's!






I'm pretty nostalgic as the anniversary of my first child's birth draws near. I'm remembering tonight, five years ago, when the induction was taking so long. As soon-to-be first time parents, everything was so scary and uncertain, but exciting and exhilerating too. And now, none of that has changed! Parenthood is still scary and exciting and uncertain and wonderful. This was the life I was meant to live. Even on the bad days, when one child is sick and cranky and another is going for the record for consecutive tantrums in a day and the other is sassing and rolling her eyes...even then I wouldn't trade this for anything else in the world.