That’s her 3rd party celebrating her 3rd birthday that I’m speaking of. This is the family party, in our house, home made cake and oh the presents galore! We request none for the friends parties because oh my do we get quite the pile from our relatives already. We spent a good part of our regular day making Celia’s cake. We chose an ambitious chocolate one because I haven’t really made a chocolate one previously that I’ve liked. I made half the regular cake size though because there aren’t all that many of it. It was super delicious and I’d make it again if I have time. But it definitely took most of the day (along with the rest of the regular child care). Celia picked an owl theme again.

We enjoyed playing the rest of the day and Celia couldn’t wait for everyone to come over and have her preferred dinner, lemon cream pasta with spinach. My poor mom had to bring her own pasta dinner as this isn’t one she could eat.

Celia loved her presents enjoying many new books, crafts and even her own sleepsack (because she kicks the blankets all off and then tries to take ours, see it below). Happy birthday my darling Cecilia!

Celia’s just finished up her third trip around the sun the middle of this month! She continues to be a big ball of stubborn enthusiasm. If she wants to do something she’s all fired up about it, and if she’s not, well… then she’s ‘tired’ and ‘can’t do it’ with the drama of a broadway actress. She will throw the full laying on the floor fits over not wanting to wash her hands. But she’s coming out of it more as she’s getting past her 2’s and getting easier to reason with and explain things to. She’s very interested in logic, that because of A, then B happens. Well she’s big on explaining that B happened because she wanted C D and E. It’s the world according to Celia and it’s a funny stage!

One recent development we’ve figured out is that she likes to play board games! We’ve been enjoying ‘hi ho cherry-oh’, memory games, sorry and uno. She’s still working on learning to count out spaces on a board, but now she is quick to identify the numbers up to six.

These last few months since Ewan have been born have thrown her for a bit of a loop, she switches between wanting to be big like Josie to small like Ewan. She wants to be babied yet she wants to do it herself. As Josie’s been in school now most of the day most days she’s getting more used to playing the role of big sister. She loves Ewan but she always wants to be a bit too close and rough with him. Good thing he’s getting bigger fast so he’ll be more of a playmate before too much longer.

Some of Celia’s favorite games are school, ballet and gymnastics. She loves to play pretend and say goodbye to me that she’s going to a class or school. Almost impossible to keep clothes on her. Plus she can undo the child-lock on the dress up, so I can’t keep her out of it like I used to be able to. We also enjoy cooking together, measuring, pouring and stirring. She loves time in the bath and generally getting messy.

Her art has changed a bit, while she’s always been one to focus on the process so far (not the result), she doesn’t mix everything completely together all the time. She does strive to make a picture look like something at times. She’s even proposed her first painting project to me too, using fingers and hand prints with red, green and yellow. We’ve been doing a lot of fall art with those colors lately.

Celia is taking one gymnastics class this fall and for her birthday she asked for a second one, so she’s got another class starting up soon. She pays very close attention in class and works hard to complete the steps, which is nice to see her listening to someone, even though it’s not me.

Academically I’ve been working with Celia on her letters, one at a time each week. She can identify them up to G and we work on her hand control with scissor practice and tracing and mazes. Celia’s excited to be doing the workbooks like Josie and learning the letter rhymes.

Lately her favorite books and stories are ones of kids behaving badly. Like “David gets in trouble” and “Little daughter and the wolf”. Her favorite part of gymnastics is jumping off the high beam. Yikes.

She’s developing some better self control and listening skills, but we still struggle with that every day. She loves to read with me and we both relish a chance to have a good snuggle. We’ve settled into a good routine with her as the big kid half the time these days. Here’s hoping this forth year will let us all settle in to ourselves with fewer changes and more fun!

• Size/weight: 4T, ~32 lbs, 39.5″
• Favorite foods: tomatoes, cheese, most fruit in general
• Favorite toy: dress up
• Favorite book: lots of variety now, Bernstein bears are popular
• Favorite activity: riding her bike, playing with Josie
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:30; nap mostly gone but is sometimes needing some extras oddly, gets up by 6:30
• New skill: recognizing letters, excellent scissors and beginning writing
• Teeth: all 20
• Vocalizations: lots of explaining and logic in how the world works in her mind.

As is typical in our house, we have at least three birthday parties for the birthday kid. One family, one with my grandmother who rarely leaves her assisted living, and one with friends. For Celia’s third birthday I gave her a choice of either a gymnasium one or swimming and she picked a playtime one in a gymnasium. We decided to take it easier on ourselves given the whole little baby and having three kids thing. So we booked the local gymnasium that includes a bunch of toys and fun with a parachute. I ordered a cake from a local bakery and even got them to put the owl themed picture onto it. It wasn’t fancy, but we had yummy food, a few good friends and easy fun. Celia had a smile on her face the whole time and loved it, which is just what I was aiming for, a happy birthday girl! She also requested chocolate dipped strawberries on her menu so I made those too.

One of the favorite things was the parachute. We’d twirl it around the people in the middle (which was always Celia plus everyone else got a turn with her too). Then we’d all pull out at once and the people in the middle would spin and twirl and flip for fun!

Best of all, it was cleaned up and relaxing for all of us, including my parents whose house we usually take over for the whole weekend to throw our bashes.

The above one is from a few weeks ago. Below is today.

We celebrated fall with our usual activity, apple picking. This year we were even on the ball enough to go almost in September! Usually we’re a bit later in the season. I remember going three years ago waiting and waiting for Celia to arrive while we went. We went again to Honeypot hill orchards and picked lots of great apples. Josie decided she likes the honey crisp ones the best for eating out of hand. The rest were mostly baking apples so I definitely agreed with her. They were sweet and all the apples were very juicy. Both girls were great at picking this year and following proper picking etiquette. Celia’s favorite part may have been throwing the half eaten apples under a tree once she was done trying them.

We started off our day having a picnic breakfast of dunkin donuts on my parents front lawn. It was the fastest way to get us moving on the way out to picking.

Then we all headed out in our minivan, me and Ewan in the back row, which thankfully made him a much happier traveler. We got there and headed out to pick apples first.

And then I handed Ewan to my dad so I could take pictures and pick apples and he could get some quality baby time in.

Pictures are of course the point of apple picking. And it was a very lovely day for it all.

On the way out there was a gorgeous tree in full fall transition and so I had everyone pose in front of it for new pictures for my walls.

After picking the apples Jordi brought them back to the car so we could go to the hayride and all the other amusements.

Then we got to go on the hayride.

We saw the three little pigs, the goats, the chickens and bunnys. We ate donuts and veggie burgers before heading back home.

Those apples made their way into a yummy crisp and applesauce, both of which were devoured quickly. The girls helped me do the chopping withe some butter knives. Josie’s got a real technique.

100% attitude. Happy Birthday to my exuberant Cecilia!

They were both disappointed there was no salad for lunch. No, I’m not kidding.

Well Josie’s learned one new thing at Kindergarden at least, spider swinging. And Ewan about two weeks ago learned to roll over! But he’s taking a page from Josie’s playbook and although he did it multiple times, over more than one day, he’s now stopped entirely. He pushes up, but just lays down if he gets tired instead of rolling. It’s like he forgot.