The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for a Frozen Princess Party

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I love celebrating the kid's birthdays with a party and sometimes a follow up dinner with family. 

I enjoy the planning and executing, and yes, praise for the job well done. I also have a formula for party planning, be it princess or tornado.

What's fitting for a five year old? A Frozen themed birthday party, of course.

Very similar to the generic princess theme we did last year but different in the sense that it is Elsa and Anna. That is a very important distinction (or so I'm told).

I put more effort into last year's party than probably any other party we've done for the kids and not because it was a princess party but, it was the first party, not in our home, that did not have built in entertainment like jumping on inflatables or trampolines.

This year I planned to make it easy, breezy and take Elsa's advice and "Let It Go." It being any and all expectations.

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for a Frozen Princess Party  (or any party really)

1. Location

My ideal location is anywhere that is not my house. Sure, I've had two parties at my house for my son and it was fun but I don't feel my house will ever be clean enough for other moms.

I like locations that clean-up and serve. Yes, there is more of a price tag, but it saves me time in the long run that I can enjoy the party. Plus, we have a small house and want the kids to enjoy themselves.

photo credit: Picturologist

Our choice is the same as last year. Not only do the kids love it, it's a neighborhood staple, and it's cheap to host a party. Plus, ice cream! We just bring the cake.

2. Invites

Free printable! Edit it, print it, or use it to make your own.

12 Funny Things My Kid Said This Past Year

March 24.

4:24 PM.

One week after our third wedding anniversary.

Our little girl came screaming into our life.

A rare moment of calm

If she wasn't screaming, she was smiling and babbling.

Before too long she was competing with her older brother for the funniest kid.

Post by Mary Johnson.

I wish I would have kept a better record of the things my oldest said when he was little.

You think you are always going to remember it, but don't. So, I started recording her quips on social media.

Looking back, it was hard to pick a few. I picked 12 out of a thousand things she said this last year.

Post by Mary Johnson.

When is Grandma Coming Back?

As Baby Girl and I were motoring down the street off to our mani/pedi appointment, or maybe it was to get doughnuts, well anyway - we were driving down the streets singing along to that song that is on the radio all-the-time and Baby Girl asks, "When is grandma coming back?"

My heart skipped a beat - my mom died this past February and I still burst into to tears thinking of her.  We have not sheltered the kids from anything, she was at her bedside to say good bye, she was at the wake and the funeral mass.  The subject of mom usually comes up when she does not want to go to the sitters with a quiet, "I miss grandma."

Before you think, "Oh! She misses her grandma!"  Don't. She doesn't want to go to the sitters and she knows this will give her a few more minutes of cuddling.  I've accepted it and I almost always give into the extra cuddles.

The whole, "When is grandma coming back?" question is a new one so I cautiously say, "Sweet pea, she isn't."

"Are you sure?"

The Simplest Ways to Make the Best Princess Party {with free printables!}

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It is so hard to believe that my baby girl is four because she acts like she is fourteen!

From wanting to wear heels and makeup to being a pretty princess she has my job cut out for me! When she requested her birthday party have a princess theme, I cringed a little. Just a little. Who doesn't want to be a princess?

I was worried about pulling it off.

She also informed me that she was to have a rainbow cake covered in butterflies and flowers. I accomplished the rainbow. The butterflies and flowers was replaced with her adding her own touch of pizzazz with sprinkles and "fairy dust."

Since this will be the first party that she got to invite friends and her birthday falls in a month with unfavorable weather conditions we opted to have the party someplace other than our house.

Besides, we were planning to have a family dinner the following evening so having another location makes it a true party weekend with less for me to clean up.

Ban Bossy or Be Bossy? #EmbraceBossy

My little girl is stubborn, headstrong, determined, and bossy.  These are all qualities I will one day celebrate in her but right now, they are exhausting.

She likes to be bossy.  She even told me that when she grows up she wants to be bossy - like me. She does not see bossy as bad and I won't change that, ever.

Ban Bossy is this amazing campaign to empower girls.  I love the website.  I love the ideas.  I hate the name.

Word(less) Wednesday: Getting Older is Hard

Wordless Wednesday: Can't Fight the Snow

I Have a Cutie Pie. Do You?

I very rarely do this and I have no idea what compelled me to do it this time but Goddess help me I entered a photo of Baby Girl in a cute baby contest.

Family and friends say we have cute kids, but honestly, who doesn't think that their babies aren't cute and why put them on display?  I guess prizes or the bragging rights - maybe.  Showing off how adorable my offspring are is at the top of the list but a contest to prove it?

I like to think that I am not competitive by nature, in fact I am a little lazy so even if I did feel compelled to enter my seriouslycutekids into any type of competition that requires popular voting they probably won't win because I will not hound my friends and relatives for votes. Maybe an email and then guilt creeps in so I don't mention it again.

I also feel that if I enter them they should win based on fair and honest voting.  So they should win automatically, right?

When I was pregnant and about to go on maternity leave I had to train my temp.  There is not a whole lot to my job or at least not what a temp would be doing while I was on leave.  My main responsibility is to react when there is an issue and attempt to fix it. Let's just say there was a lot of opportunity for small talk and one conversation has always stuck with me.

Way to stunned to say anything I laughed and went to lunch.  We all need a reminder in humility, I suppose, and whenever I need a good chuckle or think that I am getting to cute I think of her. And sure I may not be a looker but boy I think my kids might just be.

Even still, I could not resist to submit a photo that I love.  She has marker on her face from putting "make-up" on and she is wearing her Lightning McQueen hat to keep her warm.  I love this photo and it is not the typical cutie pie photo that everyone else submits but it suits her and I entered her.

I know she won't win.  I am not committed to voting anymore than my family and friends would be but who knows, maybe this time I will hound the masses in the hopes of winning the prize pack.  It sure would make her birthday shopping easier.  

Post by Mary Johnson.

What have you done that you were not particularly proud of to show off your kids?

That Post I Never Published About Vaginas

Photo via Imugur.com

When baby girl was first starting to use the potty she was a year and a half. She wasn't actually using it but she would ask to go after the fact. That lasted a month.

At two, baby girl asked to use the potty and would sit there for a few minutes, asked to be wiped and went off to play. And, then she would dirty her diaper.  That lasted a month and then she asked to wear panties.  That lasted a day.

I had started writing a blog post about how easy it was for baby girl to be trained to use the potty. I never got to finish it. She was not easy, she did not want to use the potty when she should and it would take another year and a half for her to be diaper free.

I had suspected that when it was time she would just use the potty. I was right but wrong on the time frame.

On the day that baby girl consented to wearing panties I came across this post: Sex vs. Character: What Do We Teach Our Girls?  by Lisa Belkin.. It referenced the HuffPost Parents article that ran a letter from an 8-year-old titled "Why Being A Girl Is Wonderful."

Written on a legal pad in rounded kid penmanship, it radiated pride: "We have veginas. We get jobs. We are creative. We have stuff that makes us pregnet. We have milk in our bobes. We are smart. We have power."

The post I never published was going to honor her accomplishment and her womanhood in some way.  I wanted to express to her that she owned her vagina and I would refuse to call it by any other cutesy name that was designed to inspire embarrassment instead of pride.  I never published that post.

I did eventually go on to write two posts about potty training - one expressing my distress and the other celebrating that it finally happened. So I guess I did post it, eventually, but it was not the roar inspiring one I had intended.

Do you have a post you never published or one you would like to write?

When a Three Year Old Pranks

This has been a busy month! Between fall road trips and Halloween parties and bowling and ballet the kids (and I) have been going nonstop. It is exhausting but it has been fun.

Post by Mary Johnson.

In the midst of all of the fun the kids get goofy and baby girl has begun a pranking phase. 

Of course her idea of pranking is usually at my expense and always includes hiding something of mine. Sometimes I find it and sometimes I don’t and usually I can just laugh it off except when she takes my glasses.

I cannot see without my glasses. I really can’t see at all without them so when she takes them while I am in the shower I am absolutely lost without them. It is maddening.

When I reached for my glasses, as I got out of the shower the other morning, and found them missing I yelled down to her. This also happens to be one of the few mornings she got up and went downstairs all on her own so I should have known that she was up to no good.

Anyway, when the glasses came up missing I yelled down to her and she did not answer so I threw a towel around me and ran downstairs. Since I can’t see, I have to lean in close to see her eyes to know if she took them or if I flaked and misplaced them. I am irked and frantic so she shut down and buried her face in the chair.

I was so mad. And I could not see. And she shut down!

I sent the third grader to my car to get my spare pair and I took something of hers to hold until she gave me back my glasses. That is logical, right? Take something of mine; I take something of yours.

What I took happens to be a dollar I gave her that she has been hiding in the stuffie grandma got her. She did not know I knew it was there muhahaha.

Baby girl gave me back my glasses and she got her dollar back.

But, as I was getting ready to leave for work I noticed my bag was heavier than usual and her sweet little eyes were looking up at me over the table. I opened my bag to find the pumpkin she painted on one of excursions. Before I could even ask she batted her eyelashes and told me it was so I could think of her while at work.

Word(less) Wednesday: Ballet Star

As promised, Baby Girl got her ballet classes for using the potty.  She declared that she will be a ballet star once she put on her slippers.

My 5 Favorite Words

As parents we look forward to many milestones, first smile, first walk, the first time they tell us they hate us… But, there is that moment in every parent’s life that you finally get to hear words that you so desperately wanted to hear. These words roll out of their sweet little mouths with such pride and excitement that it will make your eyes water. And these words come when you have given up all hope that you would ever hear them.

Those five little words never get old and their meaning never diminishes. I am so ridiculously thrilled each and every time I hear them spoken out loud. They usually come out in a rush so it is more like “MommyIwenttothepotty!” But those wonderful words make me so happy.

It has been a challenge to get Baby Girl to use the toilet.  She knew how, she just wouldn't. I went from begging to bribery to crying in a vain attempt to get her to pee on the potty.

How pray tell did I get our willful child to use the potty - ice cream for dinner. 

Yes, you read correctly. If she filled up a row on her sticker chart she could have ice cream for dinner. We went to the store, bought poster board in her favorite color, bought ice cream stickers and I drew boxes (and a caricature of her) on the poster board.  Every time she went on the potty she got a sticker and each line had another box to make getting the ice cream more challenging.

Mind you I did not actually give her just ice cream for dinner. She really just had dessert first. If she was still hungry (and she always was) she ate dinner.

The point is it’s been a few weeks now and I can honestly say – she is using the potty. Except that is for pooping, but one bodily function at a time.

Praying Through a Meltdown

Hail Mary full of grace, I mutter under my breath as I struggle with my willful child who went from giggles to full on meltdown in record time.

Blessed are thou among women.

I beg, bribe, threaten and even cry with her – all in vain. She wants what she wants and she thinks the only way to get it is to scream. I leave her, half-dressed to finish getting ready and make the third grader’s lunch. Her screams become louder. She has reached the point that she can’t be consoled and I've reached the point that I just don’t care.

That is too harsh. I do care but if I don’t step away I will lose control. Sadly, I can’t make her understand or calm down and until she is ready to receive comfort, I only make her angrier trying to make it better.  My heartbreaks every time we do this.

Holy Mary!

Struggling to bring my half-dressed, screaming, three year old downstairs I leave her on the floor as I go to the back door to explain to my neighbor, who does not speak English very well, that we are okay and she is having a meltdown. Exasperated hand gestures convey this somehow; then again it could be the look of defeat in my eyes.

I am more at ease knowing that my neighbors will come to my aid if there was a crisis and beyond the "I am so embarrassed" stage.

Pray for us sinners.

I sit on the couch, unable to move, let alone think. I send my son to fetch what I have forgotten upstairs. She is still screaming. She wants to go back upstairs to get dressed. She wants to stay home. She wants to wear a Hello Kitty shirt that she does not have in her wardrobe. She. Is. Still. Screaming.

I want her to get dressed and stop screaming. I want to stay home and cuddle while waiting for her brother to come home from school. I want. I want. I want.

Now and at the hour…

I need to stay calm. I need to understand that she has all these emotions and is learning to cope. I need to stand my ground and not cave to her demands because it will stop the screaming. I need to remind myself that this is one moment that I will look back on and laugh and hopefully not with regret.

You can’t reason with a child in the middle of a meltdown any more then you can reason with the tide.

I take comfort that as quickly as her meltdown happens her happy personality appears just as fast. As we headed out the door she had a smile and as she buckled in her “babies” she told knock, knock jokes about poop.

I wonder if that is the plan all along – make them cute so you forget all the grief they just put on you.

Either that or I am living with Sybil.

Amen.

Hello Funny! Best Video Ever About Getting Your Period from @HelloFlo

Browsing the internet this morning I came across an interesting heading from Mashable: This Is the Cutest Ad Ever About 'That Time of the Month.'  Personally, I don't get a period* but one day my baby girl will be a woman so naturally I had to check out "the cutest ad ever" for your period.

This is not an official endorsement for the company but one day I hope that I will be able to instill this sort of excitement instead of dread in this inevitable rite of passage for my little girl and hopefully this company is still around so that I may get her a care package and be like Santa for her vagina.




As I was watching this, my sweet soon-to-be-eight-year-old came walking up behind me to see what I was watching.  I did not say anything to him but I giggled along to the video.  When it was over he wanted to know what was so funny and I asked him if he would really like me to explain it to him.  He said, "no, I really don't want you to" and walked away shaking his head.




*not due to the "change" or my age but because I have an IUD

Because Baby Girl Wants to Cut Her Hair

It was a lazy day spent reading Facebook and catching up on blog favorites while the kids played.

Baby Girl (who is three and still responds to us calling her Baby) is hanging around me but playing by herself when she announces that she has cut her hair.

I look up from the computer and then down at her holding a pair of scissors. Not wanting to over react, I try to take in the whole situation. Her hair is not long so nothing stood out as being disastrous. I don't see any hair on the floor.  I just see her, holding the scissors and looking guilty as sin.

I asked her not to do it again and took the scissors from her. I still could not really see what she had done so I went back to what I was doing and promptly forgot it about until later that afternoon when I was helping get the Husband off to work.

As I was talking, Baby walked by me and I reached down to touch her head and as I pulled away I took a fist full of hair. I was in awe. There was so much and it just kept coming off her head!

When I asked her why she cut her hair she said, “my mom, you, said no so I asked my other mom and she said go ahead.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am not upset. I vaguely remember doing it myself and since I posted this on Facebook my loving family members took the time to remind me. It does seem to be a rite of passage of all kids, especially girls. Luckily, it is hard to notice it but we still took her to her Auntie who manages a salon to get her hair did and trimmed.

Baby has agreed to only let Auntie trim her hair in the future.

And, I would really like to have a discussion with this other mom of her... 

Word(less) Wednesday - Determination

Yes Baby, That is a Vagina...

 “Yes Baby, that is called a vagina and you wipe from front to back.” To which she promptly wiped her butt.

Why is potty training so h-a-r-d?

It seems I have forgotten how hard it was to potty train her older brother. I also seem to have forgotten how we actually accomplished training him to use the potty. I do remember how horrible it was for the whole pooping on the potty bit because he is chronically constipated but the other part, the part where he used the toilet to pee is the part I wish I could remember and how we did it.

Not that remembering would make any difference because what works for him will most certainly not work for baby girl.

Admittedly, I actually thought that baby girl using the toilet would come easy to her, like walking and talking. She showed all the signs of wanting to learn and then – nothing. This process has repeated itself several times over the last two years. Just when I think this is the moment she will never wear diapers again she laughs at me and says, “oh, mommy.”

I know that she will not be going to kindergarten in diapers so I am really not that stressed.  She will use the potty in her own time.  I'm just tired of changing diapers.

I really should be glad that she is finally weaning herself and sleeping in her bed – most nights. It is only logical that this is the next step in her becoming a big girl. Right? Am I asking for too much?  Maybe I am pressuring her to much?  Eh, whatever, she wants to do this.  Right?

I have come to hate the term “potty training.” 

I have tried rewards, from stickers to M&Ms and even a toy chest. Go potty – get a toy. She has not gotten a toy, yet.

My sister gave her the cutest panties for her birthday which she promptly put on and went through the whole package in one afternoon, never making it to the bathroom.

I took her shopping for panties and let her pick out whatever ones she wanted. And the same scenario as my sister’s panties played out.

I have even bribed her with dance lessons. She wants to take ballet and she can’t until she can use the potty all of the time. I am also using those really cute bathing suits she loves as incentive. Bikinis look really silly with a diaper.  Did I mention the books, DVDs and dolls?

Oh, how I wish they were just born with the ability to use the toilet.

I guess if you buy into the whole infant potty training process they are born with the ability and we train them to use the diaper. Adopting this thinking now would mean I would need a time machine to travel back in time and would probably have to go on leave from job because I am not sure my sitter would be up for the task.

For now, we are trying those pull up diapers and those padded training underwear. She has yet to tell me when she has to use the toilet. I could try taking her every 30 minutes but that would mean I would have to remember and I suppose those cute potty watches would work well in this instance but do I really want to flush any more money down the toilet?

I also suppose learning her cues would be helpful but honestly the only clue she seems to have is for when she is pooping and if I am not paying attention I miss that she is hiding, because she is hiding.

Oh, the woes of having a toddler on the brink of preschoolhood. 

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Amazing Moments

Life is just a series of moments. 

Sometimes good, sometimes bad but always amazing.

Here is to remembering this moment, savoring it and looking forward to the next one.

Word(less) Wednesday: Missing Teeth

My broken baby and I with our missing teeth. And, by "our missing teeth" I mean, I had two wisdom teeth pulled so you really can't see it in my smile. 

Word(less) Wednesday: Caught Playing

“Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something”

― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid