Tate is officially 2! If you ask him, though, he’s more likely to say that he’s 9 or 13, his favorite numbers of late.

Upon realizing that his birthday would fall during the Winter Olympics, I had a flashback to a jellybean-Olympic-rings cake my mom made when I was little. (I’m guessing ’84 in LA?) With my theme established, I started scouring the internet for other Olympic-related party ideas. Here’s what we ended up with:

• My brother downloaded the Olympic theme song to be playing as the guests arrived.
• The colors were red (for Team USA, with a nod to the Canadian host country) and silver, since it was a second birthday.
• Awesome 3-D paper snowflakes – awesome because of how great they looked, and also because I didn’t have to make them (a leftover Christmas decoration from the MagnetStreet office – thanks Rene’!). If you have older kids, though, it would be a fun craft.
• Chocolate gold medals for the kids – you can buy them here. Or for our cheapo version, use super glue to attach chocolate gold coins to plastic gold medals.

• Olympic Flag posters – Using Lindsey’s watercolor valentines as inspiration, Tate and I painted six half-sheets of posterboard, one in each of the ring colors*. The next day I traced around 2 different-sized plates, then cut out the ring shapes. A little glue stick under each ring, and we had a flag. Since there was plenty of painted paper, I made 3 flags to hang around the house.

• Tate helped to put a flag toothpick in each of the corn muffins. We had chicken chili and tater tot hotdish for lunch.

Some other fun ideas that I didn’t end up using:

• Assigning a different country to each family, asking them to come to the party dressed accordingly.
• Preparing an international menu that represents a variety of countries – ideas at Kids Birthday Idea Guide.
• Decorating with a banner of international flags. (I had great intentions of sewing these, but then remembered that I never finish sewing projects. Also decided not to pay for a plastic one online.)
• Sledding or skating activity – maybe we’ll do this in 4 or 8 years, when Tate is having parties with friends.

Unfortunately, my “inspiration piece” cake was less than spectacular. I started off feeling all chef-ly, slicing off the rounded top and frosting a base layer. Then I ran out of frosting and ended up putting the whole thing back into the pan so the unfrosted edges wouldn’t show. I added extra toothpick flags around the edges, as a distraction from the mess. The peanut M&M rings worked, at least!

The real highlight of dessert was the Olympic torch ice cream cones that my sister made. Earlier that morning, she filled the cones with vanilla ice cream and doused them in yellow and red sprinkles. We lined them up in a plastic container and put them back in the freezer.

In addition to being adorable, this strategy made the dessert-serving go quickly, since we weren’t scooping out ice cream on each plate. Everyone got to enjoy a cone while I was cutting the cake.

I’m a big fan of having a theme for parties – it makes the planning easier by providing a focus for the food, decorations, invitations, etc. What party themes have you used for your child’s birthday?

*For our Olympics, I went with “brown is the new black” because there was no black paint in the 10-pack of Crayola paints. And also because a standard bag of M&Ms has brown, not black candies (for the rings on our cake).

I’m finishing a post about Tate’s birthday party…here’s a sneak peak:

Yes, we still call him Tater Tot, even at the ripe old age of two. Yes, we live in Minnesota, home of the hotdish. Yes, his birthday is right in the midst of the Winter Olympics.

Stay tuned…

Does planning a birthday party for your child fill your heart with delight or panic?

We’ve certainly all heard stories of extravagant parties costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I guess like every area of parenting, it’s not fair to judge anyone else’s choice. But if you want to laugh at someone’s extravagance, read this hilarious article by one of my favorite writers, Dave Barry (thanks to Sonya for sending it my way!). 

At the other end of the spectrum, many families are choosing to simplify birthday celebrations. This post from Simple Mom gives some excellent suggestions for minimizing materialism, such as creating gifts for a charity in lieu of traditional party games.

Since I work for an invitation company, I can’t completely get behind her suggestion to use Evite or handmade invitations. I’m biased of course, but ours are just so cute! View the entire birthday invitation gallery online, or modify your favorite birth announcement design to be a party invite.

For tips on what’s appropriate for birthday parties at each age, read this article by Kimberly Hargis. I like her idea of having bigger celebrations for the milestone years (5, 10, etc.) and something simpler for those in-between.

How do you celebrate your kids’ birthdays? What were your own birthday parties like as a child?

It’s a little early, but I’m going to go ahead and wish myself a Happy Birthday. Approximately 32 years ago, my 10 pound, 1 ounce self was entering the world. Thanks again, Mom, and sorry about being late!

And not only was I born 32 years ago, but my first birthday was being celebrated 31 years ago. (I know, I’m awesome with the maths.)

I’m pretty sure magnetic birthday party invitations weren’t an option for my parents. But now, in the wonders of 2009, you can put your child’s birthday invitation on a magnet, with his or her adorable photo, in the colors of your choosing. What a wonderful world.

So without further ado, here are my favorites:

All of these designs can be ordered as either magnets or on linen cardstock. You can view the entire birthday invitation gallery online.

And…happy birthday to Sue, Sonya, Queen Elizabeth and Tony Danza.

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When we were pregnant with Tate, we started telling our family around the 8-week mark. All of my siblings were visiting my mom over the 4th of July weekend, and after breakfast I gave her an early birthday present – a little red wagon for her new grandbaby. My sister and sister-in-law screamed “are you pregnant?!” and suddenly there was lots of crying and laughing and hugging.

For my husband’s parents, we gave a tiny life jacket for the new grandbaby to use at their cabin. They were completely surprised, and we got a few happy tears out of Granny. I can only imagine having my firstborn son tell me he’s going to have a baby of his own!

With other friends or co-workers, I got to turn down a glass of wine or extra candy because it “wouldn’t be good for the baby”. My aunt called to offer me a discount at her clothing store, and I told her that I wouldn’t be buying any regular clothes for the next 9 months or so.

One of my friends sent her parents on a scavenger hunt that ended in their kitchen, where there was a bun in the oven- ha! Another friend emailed a picture of her son in a “Big Brother” t-shirt to her parents.

I did a little internet search on creative ways to tell people that you’re pregnant. My favorite was a woman that sent her parents a dozen roses with a note that said “11 red roses from your baby and 1 pink rose from ours”. My least favorite was putting the ultrasound picture on a cake and bringing it to a family meal. Personally, I don’t think uterus photos belong on dessert.

How did you share your pregnancy news? What were the best reactions?

Photo Courtesy:
Mr. Usaji

This week we finally called it…Tate is a walker.

It’s taken longer than I had expected- on January 18, I wrote in his journal “You took several steps this week; I wonder if you’ll be walking by your birthday?”. He got up to about 5 or 6 steps sometime in February, then seemed to regress a bit. The last few weeks he picked up steam, and my husband kept saying, “okay, now he’s walking, right?”.

I’m not sure why I have the household power of declaring the achievement of baby milestones – maybe because I’m the one that records them in the journal and the blog? Anyway, I have the power and my rule was that a “walker” chooses to walk from Point A to Point B instead of crawling. And this week, he’s there.

We thought part of the reason it was taking him so long to walk was because of the slipperiness of our hardwood floors. Either that was faulty reasoning, or he’s just got super-Spiderman-grip now, but he’s cruising around even in stocking feet. I think his favorite part is that he can carry two things in his hands now. Usually it’s 2 shoes or the 2 remote controls. Here’s the evidence:

Well, I’m off to write in his journal… Who has a good “learning to walk” story about their children?

And…who knows what movie is quoted in the title of this post?

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Tate’s hair has been in need of a cut since before Christmas, but I’ve been putting it off. Little boys always seem to look so grown up after that first cut, and I just wasn’t ready for that. It’s bad enough that my weekly emails from BabyCenter now say “Your Toddler This Week” instead of “Your Baby This Week”.

I compromised and had my friend Melissa trim his bangs in January so that the poor kid could at least see. They were already in his eyes again, though, and the back was getting dangerously close to a mullet, so I finally made an appointment at her salon. Melissa is not only a hairstylist but also the mom of three little boys, making her the perfect candidate for the job!

Since it was Saturday, all three of us headed for the mall. We figured it would work best for Tate to sit on my lap and have Dad be the photographer. Melissa started by putting a cute little zoo animal cape on Tate and a boring black one on me. So far, so good.

She moved slowly, giving him time to feel comfortable, and gave him some combs to play with. He was fascinated by all the other people getting their hair cut, and the lights and mirrors.

Then it was time to spray water on his head, which he found less enjoyable. She got enough water on to start, but he also didn’t like the sound of the cutting. We had to distract him by spraying the water on his hand, then dad’s hand, then by opening and closing one of those big hair clips. I was just waiting for the clip to close on his fingers, with the resulting sadness ending the haircut with a half-mullet, but we got lucky.

The effort of distracting him served to distract me as well, so I didn’t really have time to be sad about my baby growing up. As I feared, he does look older, but his curls are still there. My own baby curls never came back after my first haircut but apparently that’s not genetic. And if I ever buy that baby book, we have supplies for the “first haircut” envelope.

Thanks again Melissa – you did a great job!

Anyone have a good first haircut story to share? What baby milestones did you most dread?

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Laying Tate down tonight, I marveled at how long he has become. When he scrunched up his little newborn legs, his toes barely reached my belly button. Lately, I have to give a little extra oomph on my tiptoes to get his feet over the crib rail. Having just passed his first birthday, I find myself marveling at a lot of “look how far we’ve come” things…

The biggest one is sleep. We were not blessed with a naturally good sleeper, and definitely made some parenting errors that made the situation worse. (Read the whole three-part saga, beginning with Our Sleep Journey.) But now, and for the last several months, this is not a struggle. He goes to bed around 7pm, wakes for an early-morning feeding, sleeps a little more and is up for the day around 7am. We can even have babysitters put him to bed. It’s wonderful!

Another one is food: from the first watery rice cereal at four months to the sudden demand for all finger food (Don’t Spoonfeed Me!), he’s now eating a lot of the same things we eat. Advice from many of you has been really encouraging- Allison, you said to try the spoon again every once in awhile. Sure enough, he’s been willing to do yogurt, avocados and now applesauce. Lisa, you told me how you mixed the rice cereal flakes with Bisquick to make pancakes good enough for the whole family. (I’m using up my ground Super Baby Food grains for this.) John, frozen peas are a hit! The self-feeding is obviously more messy, but it’s also pretty fun to see him enjoy new things, especially things I wouldn’t think a baby would like- BBQ meatballs, pepper jack cheese, parmesan risotto. Plus while he eats, I can usually make a quick meal for myself.

In Tate’s first few weeks of life, I hardly ever bathed him because it was such a traumatic ordeal for both of us. The nurse had done such a good job of holding him and getting him clean in that little plastic tub at the hospital, but I quickly realized that I was not as skilled. Once we switched to the infant tub with a hammock-style attachment, voila, bathtime was happytime! (Even though he doesn’t look super-happy in this picture.) Eventually we moved into the real bath tub. I laid him on his back in just an inch of water and he kicked his little legs furiously, surprised when he’d occasionally splash himself in the face. Now it’s all playtime- toys, splashing, “Tate, we don’t stand up in the tub!”, etc.

There are lots of other fun things, like playing with toys and reading books, instead of him simply eating both of them. He understands many directions and loves to be a helper.

And of course some not-so-fun things, generally associated with asserting independence and opinions-  cries that say “I want that and I want it now!” or “Mom, why are you setting me down when I know you can brush your teeth while you’re holding me?”. I’ve noticed that we have far fewer pictures of the last few months, largely because when I pull out the camera, he wants to grab it instead of being in a picture.

We bought more plastic bins last week, to hold the latest round of outgrown clothes. They’re lined up next to the infant car seat, the baby bath tub, and the sleep positioner. Each item had a period in which it was essential, and now they wait to be needed by a someday-little brother or sister.

Remembering all these changes suggests that maybe this first year hasn’t gone by as fast as it feels. I can’t wait to see what the next year will hold!

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We had a moment! Maybe one of my favorite of Tate’s life thus far…

My husband, Tate and I were sitting on the couch the other day, looking out the window and yanking on the blinds (Tate), and trying to keep Tate from falling off the couch when we tickled him (Mommy & Daddy). A fun moment in its own right, I’ll admit.

Then I asked Tate, “Can you give Mommy a kiss?”. And sure enough, he just leaned in and planted a big wet one right on my mouth. I couldn’t believe that he had understood- that I am “Mommy”, what a kiss is, and where a kiss goes! I tried again: “Can you give Daddy a kiss?”. Yep, he took a step over and gave Dad a kiss too.

Okay, like most parents, I think my child is a genius. On further reflection, I realize that his understanding, or at least his obedience, is rather selective. For example, he doesn’t “understand” when I say “Don’t bite Mommy!”. 

But back to the sweetness. He’ll always give kisses on request (I try to restrain myself), but also chooses to give them out at random moments. Like when we were reading our Who Loves Baby?  book that has photos inserted, and he just leaned down and kissed the picture of his cousin. Or sometimes when he cries in the middle of the night, I go in to pick him up for just a minute. He lays his head down on my shoulder, then switches to the other shoulder and back again, trying to get comfortable. Then suddenly I realize that he’s stopped in the middle, giving me a kiss right there in the dark.

Oh, my precious almost-a-year-old baby, please don’t ever outgrow this!

What have your children (young or old) done to make your heart melt?

Photo Courtesy:
oskay

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After getting the okay from our pediatrician, Tate started eating solid foods (i.e. very watered-down rice cereal) at four months. At six months, I gradually started other grains, avocados, bananas, sweet potatoes, etc.

My main reference book has been Super Baby Food, by Ruth Yaron. I totally recommend it. She teaches you how to prepare healthful foods for your baby, introducing new items each month as appropriate for their developing digestive system. At Tate’s age, the core elements are Super Porridge (you grind grains in your blender, then boil them with water to make cereal- picture the “bowl full of mush” from Goodnight Moon) and food cubes (you mash or puree fruits & vegetables, then put them into ice cube trays to be frozen for future use).

We were moving along well for several months, finding out what he liked and didn’t like. This could vary on any given day, mind you. I hadn’t done much with finger foods, but they gave him Cheerios in the church nursery and he loved them. So Cheerios (or their organic, store-brand cousin to be exact) entered the mix at home too.

Then Tate stopped eating his healthy, whole-grain goodness-with-extra-love-added-by-Mom, Super Porridge. We were back to processed, store-bought cereal flakes, but that was just the beginning. Within a couple of weeks, he absolutely refused any food given to him on a spoon.

So now it’s a whole new adventure, trying to discover finger foods that are okay for him to eat at this age. He’d eat bananas & avocados for every meal if I’d let him. Little pieces of cheese are a big hit, sometimes he’ll do sweet potatoes or squash. Our biggest struggle is green veges. Ruth Yaron raves about pureed kale and spinach, but I’m sure the whole leaves would be a choking hazard. I thought he’d love green beans and peas, but no (and they don’t have that much nutritional value anyway- who knew?!). Send me your ideas…please!!

In the meantime, I have 2 containers full of frozen fruit and vegie cubes, and enough ground millet, rice, barley & oats to feed a small army, provided said army doesn’t mind having mush 3 meals a day. Send me ideas for using those up too, while you’re at it!

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