She's Three!

My girl turned three on Sunday, and boy did we celebrate. When I say 'celebrate', I mainly mean eating our favorite foods while wearing fun hats. And oh yeah...opening LOTS of great gifts! Yammy and Poppa and Uncle Monkey flew in so we also had some great days with them at the beach, pumpkin patch and preschool. My Dad was the official photographer of our weekend and I haven't seen his pics yet, so these are mine and are not the best photos, but you'll get the idea:

Yammy and Poppa went to preschool with Millie on Thursday. She celebrated her birthday with her class by picking out this book and donating it to her classroom.

Birthday lunch at In N Out!

Millie opened her gifts from Gamma & Gampa Greer while chatting with them on Skype.

Gamma Greer made this AMAZING quilt for Mils. It's the Hungry Caterpillar! She loved it instantly and set up a bed right there in the middle of the floor. She has slept with it every nap & night.

Rockin Out.

If Millie didn't love this gift so much, I might consider some serious retribution for my little brother. Who else but a crazy Uncle would buy a toy that 1) lights up; 2) plays piercing music at high volume; and 3) has a bonus electric guitar feature that puts out some screeching, deafening noise when her fingers hit the strings? Oooohhh, I'll get you Matty.

She's so excited right now because out on the sidewalk, just behind her birthday crown, is her new BIG GIRL BIKE! It's the real thing, a two-wheeler with training wheels! Boy is she proud to ride it around the neighborhood. My girl has never looked so grown up as when she pedaled away from me on that bike. Knocked the air right out of me.

"Hi...Welcome to CiCi's" Perhaps I should be embarrassed that we went to an all you can eat pizza buffet for my daughter's birthday, but it really was the perfect end to a busy day/weekend.

What was NOT a perfect end to the day was when our otherwise angelic dog Casey jumped up on the kitchen counter to knock Millie's birthday cake to the floor. AND THEN SHE ATE IT! I'm not even kidding. She devoured nearly the whole thing while we were putting the kids to bed. I cried just a bit because not only had this cake taken me all afternoon to bake (a butterscotch layer cake with caramel cream cheese frosting) but NONE of the adults had tried it. Thankfully, we sang and gave Millie a slice before Casey got to it, which is the most important part, of course. Casey and I weren't on speaking terms for a few days. Oh well.

Millie is just blowing my mind these days. She is incredibly friendly and gregarious (has lots of her dad in her). She will introduce herself to anyone, respond perfectly to adults who start conversations with her, and sit down and play with kids of all ages. She lights up when she sees her friends from preschool or the park and just slides right up beside them to say hello. Millie is SILLY. I mean, you've seen the outfits she puts together for dancing. She makes up games to play with Simon (which have involved a lot of scotch tape lately, much to Simon's dismay) and just harasses Casey with her love. She's got this crazy vocabulary that she busts out on us all the time (her favorite big words: Actually, Dangerous, Exhilarating, Available). She's a great rule follower and and excellent rule-stretcher/negotiator. She doesn't seem to have much brattiness in her thus far, which I am so thankful for. I love spending my days with this little personality. She keeps me laughing, makes me proud, and really just takes my breath away.

'Tis the Season...

...for pumpkin pictures! My friend Laura came down for a visit with Taylor and Bo, so we spent a couple hours catching up and playing around the house and then headed out to our favorite patch. It's really more like a "Pumpkin Amusement Park-meets-Dairy Farm" so the kids had a BLAST. Of course, I had just as much fun watching Millie and Si interact with their friends and explore the farm. Not to mention how great it was to be with Laura again. What a perfect fall day!

All the kids in a wagon. Seemed like a good idea...

...until it all went wrong. Si's screaming for rescue; Bo's contemplating a dare devil leap to the next wagon; Persnickety Millie is brushing hay off Bo; Dignified Taylor is just above all this nonsense

Atop the hay pyramid

Entangled in the hay maze

Hay ride!

"OH!"

This is Laura's photo and I think it's just hysterical. The three big kids LOVED 'sledding' down the hill of cotton seed. It was fluffy and soft and just the right speed.

The sweet girls dancing to questionable "Kidz Bop" Avril Lavigne tunes. An interesting note about the divvying up of dancing costumes: Taylor is modeling the dress/wings/headband look while Mils is wearing the red dancing hat & shoes combo. Both are equally desirable to her. Funny.

Update: Our Little Fashion Model

Remember a few weeks ago when we trekked up to LA for a fun little photo shoot for TOMS? Today they launched their new line of youth shoes. Check out their home page!

Millie's Friends

I must say, Millie has the most awesome taste in friends. She knows to target the kids with really GREAT parents. For example, I think I enjoy my time with Katherine almost as much as Millie and Anna love being together. Last week we all hit our favorite pumpkin patch one day and then a neighborhood block party the next. Millie even dug up the courage to climb into her very first bounce-house thingy!

Regular Stuff

On the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier.

So what's new? Hmm. Christopher made it home safely from Guam (bearing awesome gifts) and we made it safely through the week without him. Millie is still loving preschool. Last week her teacher told me that she was the "master of the class". I think this is a positive thing since she said it with a smile (I was/am a bit 'bossy', so this trait in her can go either way). Apparently Mils' is compassionate (likes to console her classmates who get sad when their parent leaves) and is a strong turn-taker (often preschoolers and toddlers can't yet comprehend the concept of sharing, so we work on taking turns with toys instead). She's completely potty trained during the day and is dealing with the new rule that she can only have her blanket and suck her thumb if she's in her bed. Sometimes she tries to trick me by asking if she can sleep in the car...apparently I turn a blind eye to the thumb sucking when she zonks out in the car seat!

This outfit started out pretty normal. However, she remembered her friend Taylor greeting her at the door in a floor length white dress-up gown and was inspired to dig up her own white dress. There's no explanation for the boots. Or for the hair, really. Just crazy.

Simon is a million miles a minute. Seriously, he's really hard to catch when he gets his crawl up to full speed. No, he's not walking yet. But no, I'm not panicked about it either. He's free-standing all the time so I know we're on the right track. I finally got sick of him dragging his dinner through his hair, so the other night I took some scissors to his wings. I don't think I envisioned his first haircut being on top of the picnic table on the back porch of my friend's house in the last slivers of daylight, but I just couldn't take another evening of scrubbing marinara out of the wisps.

Good shot of the hair butchery...I mean cut.

Oh please ignore the basket of doom in the background. It's my catch-all for things that need to go back into the kids' room. Maybe I should stop blogging and start dealing with that basket. Anyway, a good shot of the free-standing.

He LOVES books. To be specific, he loves five books: DOGS, Puppies, Pets, Baby Animals, and Millie Moo. He also insists on holding a book while riding in the car. He loves trucks and cars and scooting them around the house (Mils never did this, so it's fun that he discovered this play all on his own). We take a music class together on Thursday mornings and my heart nearly explodes with the happiness of having time for just the two of us. I got a little emotional during the first class -- I felt like I was discovering a whole new side of this amazing boy. I think he realizes we've got something special going on, too.

It's HOT here, still. I'm eyeing my fleece longingly and imagining the kids' in long sleeves and pants soon. We've got a crazy, busy month ahead: my big girl will turn three years old! plus lots of other adventures. Fun.

The gang just before Christopher's triathlon in Malibu a few weekends ago. It's about 6:30am. Si's lookin' real happy.

Christopher heading for the finish line. He set a personal best time! The water was SUPER rough (he still swam fast) and he ran the fastest 10K of his life at the end. We are so proud of him.