C is for Cookie Party

Ahhh birthday parties. They can be so stressful. How many kids do you invite? Who do you invite? Will you do a theme? How will you fill the time?

I have thought about Eli’s birthday party for a while now. My friend Rebekeh suggested we do a C is for Cookie party (she’d seen some cute ideas on some blog) and that’s what we did! Below is Eli, sporting his fabulous “C” t-shirt.

I tried to keep things simple. We had goldfish, pretzels, grapes, and drinks. And lots and lots of cookies, of course.

I went through a lot of grief about who to invite. I am in charge of our huge playgroup with lots of great little kids, but I knew Eli wouldn’t handle a party with a million kids very well. So we invited five of his friends that he gets along with really well or has had successful playdates with and I tried not to look back (though I stressed and stressed about other kids we didn’t invite). I thought about not posting stuff on my blog, but decided that was silly.

We started the morning off with the bubble machine, which was lots of fun.

But after a little bit, the kids were just having fun running around the yard, playing with balls and climbing on the playset. It was all pretty low key, which was nice! My family also came to the party, which was fun.

Ben is my hero. He drew this fabulous Cookie Monster poster so we could play “Pin the Cookie on C.” He did such a good job!! The kids didn’t really get into the blindfold part of the game, so we just spun them around really fast and it was still really fun.

See that Happy Birthday banner on the fence? It came without an A in Happy! So it read: HPPY BIRTHDAY. I’m taking it back to Target.

Rebekeh gave Eli a mix CD with all kinds of fabulous kids songs (including the C is for Cookie song!), so we played it during the party. The kids had fun dancing around the patio area and Eli was very protective of his “C” stuffed animal.

As I mentioned earlier, we had lots and lots of cookies at this party. I made sugar cookies in the shapes of the number 2 and the first letter of each child’s name. I also did some circles since I figured those would be fast to frost and decorate – so each child decorated some cookies (and most ate them right away). Then it was time for the chocolate chip cookie cake (we were really trying to sugar them up :).

One of the funny moments with the cake was that Eli was showing C the cake and C leaned in a little too close, getting whip cream on himself. Eli wasn’t too happy about that, but we quickly cleaned C up and it was fine. Opening presents was lots of fun too!

Charlie slept through the first part of the party and was a little out of it after he woke up.

Eli was in a great mood for his party (which was a relief because he didn’t nap yesterday, so I was nervous about how he would be today).

We opened presents from my family inside after the party was over. Gram made Eli a whole ensemble of fleece duck things – a big blanket for Eli, a pillow, a stuffed duck, a mini blankie for the duck, etc. He of course loved the soft, stuffed duck and was sweet with it. My parents gave Eli a cute wooden train that has stacking blocks, a tugboat book and some bath toys (tugboats). Davey gave Eli a cute book too.

Eli really loves Davey. But every time we had him sit at the stairs to take a picture, he would pause for just a minute and then get up and run around the yard laughing.
Sweet boy. It was a fun (but exhausting) day!

Charlie’s First Solid Food

We gave Charlie rice cereal for the first time on Thursday night… it was a semi-warm day outside, so we fed him out on the deck. He scarfed down the rice cereal, it was great! (last night it wasn’t as big of a hit, but tonight he was back to liking it again)

Look at that happy face! :)

       

I’m hoping an even fuller tummy = more sleep for both of us…

Latest Stats

Charlie at 4 Months: 15 1/2 lbs (50-75%), 25” height (50%), 16 3/4 head circ. (50%) – rolling over and prefers to sleep on his tummy now
Eli at 2 Years: 25 lbs, 4 oz (10%), 34 1/4” height (50%) – peed on the potty for the first time on Thursday night! (hasn’t happened again since, which is just fine – but the one time was exciting) Cute Brothers!

Happy Birthday to Ben / Memorial Day Weekend

Ben turned 31 on Saturday, and the big excitement for him this year was that he got a kayak! He has been pretty obsessed with the idea of kayaking in the lagoons near our house and in Lake Michigan, and when I mentioned this to my friend Katie, she said, “We have a kayak in our storage that he could use!” Apparently a friend has been keeping a kayak here for many years now and has yet to pick it back up, so now we’re storing/using it indefinitely until the guy wants it back (he lives in another state now).

The only problem with this fabulous, free kayak was that we didn’t have a way to transport the kayak with our sedan that lacks a rack. So my birthday gift for Ben was a foam/strap set from LL Bean that enables you to strap the kayak onto a regular car – it worked perfectly and Ben picked the kayak on Friday.

So the next issue was that Ben still needs to buy a life jacket (our deal is he can kayak in Lake Michigan ONLY if he is wearing a life jacket). In the meantime, Ben wanted to try the kayak in the canal that isn’t too far from our house. He was convinced that he could just wheel the kayak over rather than deal with driving, so he rigged up our snap and go stroller and started on his way.
The only problem is that the kayak is really heavy.
So the stroller kept tipping over… the poor guy turned around after two blocks of tiring, unsuccessful transporting of the kayak.

On Monday, Ben put the kayak on the car and went over to the Skokie Lagoons, where he kayaked and fished happily for a few hours. He was SO happy when he came home. Thank you Mark and Katie for letting us use this kayak!!

Below are some pictures from the weekend when we were playing outside. Ben strung a whiffle ball up to a tree so Eli could practice with his baseball bat. It was pretty funny.
 

And here are some pictures in the swing. Eli was making the funniest expressions that day.