My baaaaaaaaaby isn’t a baby anymore. He’s not even a toddler. He’s *almost* a preschooler.

Now if only I could get him to potty train. (It’s fine. He won’t go to elementary school in diapers, we’ll figure it out. I just hate the part where I can’t ever sit down because I have to walk him to the bathroom 400 times a day.)

Finnegan is a real sweetheart most of the time. He loves people after he pretends to be shy for a few minutes. He’s super brave and a bit of a daredevil, so he hurts himself regularly but it never slows him down. He has a great vocabulary but still a baby voice, so sometimes he’s hard to understand. He’s very smart and has a looooong memory. He can be a real jerk when you’re mad at him, because he’ll just laugh in your face and DGAF about your consequences.

Don’t ask when he’s getting a haircut because he’s not.

Apologies for the wind blowing background noise on the video, we did it at the lake and I didn’t block the microphone well enough.

Evan is 5 years and 3 months old.

He refuses to let me cut his hair, even though it is getting long and shaggy and gets stuck in his goggles when he tries to swim. Swimming is the only sport or activity he wants to be signed up for, although he said in the fall he’d like to try football.

Evan loves cereal more than any other food. He would rather eat cereal than ice cream or candy or soda or anything else. Sometimes it’s understandable (who doesn’t love Lucky Charms?) but sometimes it’s something really random, like Honey Bunches of Oats. This week it was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which he had never actually eaten before but INSISTED I buy at the grocery store. He ate 4 bowls between noon and bedtime.

He is a really good helper and will try to do anything you ask, even if he’s not physically capable of doing it. But he is willing to TRY and then ask for help if he needs it. It’s such an amazing grown up skill that even a lot of real grown ups struggle with.

If you ask him to describe himself, he’ll say he’s a ginger and he’s brave.

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Caroline is 3 years and 7 months old.

She thinks all “3”s and “C”s belong to her personally, so when she sees them on signs or in stores she wants to take them home.

All of her toys have basically the same name. Her toy horse is called Horse. Her zebra is named Zebra-Zeeb. A stuffed duck is named Ducky Duck Duck. The only exceptions are her two baby dolls, who are named Baby Memba and Baby Jesus. Obviously.

Caroline calls herself a “curly girl” because people are always commenting on her beautiful hair. Then she finger-twirls her curls because she’s in an invisible contest for the cutest child ever.

Today she told me that “duplicate” is when there is more than one of you, like when you look in the mirror.

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Both children have no fear or strangers or people. They will ask to be friends with anyone and get sad when their “new friends” (aka the girl they met in the waiting room, the bagger at the grocery store, a random guy who held the door at the mall) leave.

They ate 3/4 of a watermelon today. A real full size watermelon.

They are best friends. They often try to kill each other. I hope nothing changes.

I stopped doing Caroline’s monthly updates because it seemed so unnecessary – she had reached all her milestones and it was sort of boring (and braggy) to repeat over and over that my toddler was a genius. But then suddenly I realized it was November and we were only a few weeks away from 36 months old and I was going NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

But it’s definitely true. She may actually have been 3 for the last 6 months and I was just counting wrong. It seemed ridiculous to call her 2 when she never uses her a stroller, goes to a real preschool class, has no fear of new things or people, dresses herself, can order her own food at restaurants, sits through a full-length movie in a theater, and can sled down big giant hills without freaking out even a little bit.

(FTR, there’s a chain link fence at the bottom of that hill so they couldn’t go out into the road. It’s a perfect sledding hill.)

I think she acts so grown up because I treat her like she’s grown up. I expect the same things from her that I expect from her 4 1/2 year old brother, which might not always been fair for her but she handles incredibly well. It also makes my life easier, since they’re able to play together, share together and help take care of each other (and me – let’s be honest, being able to fetch things for you is a major reason to have kids). She is so kind and helpful and sweet and full of cuddles I sort of dread the 3’s. And the 4’s. And everything between 10 and 21. Right now when she gets super mad at me she mostly cries and says “I need a huuuuuuuuuuug!” I imagine that won’t last forever, so I’m trying to appreciate it now, even when it happens 14 times a day.

She had a dentist appointment and her flu mist spray on the same day last week and handled both without any crying or running away or fighting. She understands the concept of “Do this now and then it’s over and we can go home and have a cuddle”, although stickers or ice cream make very effective bribes. Sometimes there is a little bedtime stalling – especially if she thinks we’re having fun without her – but sleeps through the night 99% of the time. She finally grew a little bit (I’ll get stats at her check-up in January), but she’s wearing actual 3T sizes in shirts and 2T in pants, although yesterday she wore a pair of 18 month snow pants.

Caroline loves princesses and pink and sparkly things. She also loves running and screaming and playing in the dirt and jumping in muddy puddles and throwing snowballs. Right now she has absolutely no sense of girl things vs boy things or “acting like a lady” and the first time I hear anyone try to explain it to her I will LOUDLY tell them they are wrong. I hope she makes all her own decisions about her likes and dislikes forever, be it wearing gowns to the grocery store or running around the house in boots, underpants and a pirate hat.

Her likes include talking, animals, repeating everything I’ve ever said, pink, cookies, helping, hugs, her brother, Daddy, the iPad, princesses, dress up, snow, sledding, drawing, eating, talking some more, Christmas, sleeping, balloons, school, jumping, running, even more talking, books, singing songs she made up, What Does The Fox Say?, quesadillas, the aquarium, talking to people she doesn’t know at the store, Santa, movies, her stuffed ducky, her stuffed doggy, and her stuffed kitty.

Dislikes include being really tired, being really hungry, when Mommy says no, when Daddy goes to work, wearing the appropriate amount of clothing for winter in Connecticut, and “when Blushes [our cat] gets angwy and goes ‘HAAAAAACH'”.

I did a birthday questionnaire for Evan in writing, but Caroline is better at answering questions (although sort of hard to understand on video) so I broke out the record function on my DSLR for the first time ever and asked her about her favorite things:

Happy 3rd birthday to my Christmas Girl, Caroline Noelle! You are amazing and I love you bunches and bunches forever.

This is not the most amazing party I’ve ever thrown. I think Caroline’s woodland fairies from last year was a lot more creative. I decorated more, I made more food, I had more crafts and activities. But both kids are now at an age where they have An Opinion on what kind of party they want and as much as I like throwing fancy parties I really just want them to be happy – which means this year Princess Caroline got her Princess Party. She had an absolutely amazing time and will probably talk about it every day for the next year, and that’s really what matters.

Food and decorations first: The giant 3 balloon is from Oriental Trading and I will be buying one for every birthday from now on. I bought one of those disposable helium tanks since none of the local stores would blow up a balloon I bought somewhere else and it’s still floating 2 days later. The printables all came from an Etsy shop called Mama Moonlights, who customized the colors and name for free. Almost all the other decorations were from previous parties (one of the advantages of so many parties is I have a TON of stuff!).

Welcome!

I am not a chalkboard writing expert yet, but give me a couple years.

That frame has been in the basement since a yard sale last summer. I bought three for $2.

The tulle covered lights were from Caroline’s first birthday.

Christmas lights are the best part of December birthdays

A reading/relaxing/seating corner

Seriously LOVE this balloon

Dress up selection – I bought the adjustable rack for $20 from Amazon

Lousy iPhone photo of the Royal Tents – also from Amazon and extremely well made by Pockos. They’re around $30 right now but I paid about $20 each.

For our food and drink, my theme was Pink and Fancy. It was a 2 pm party, so I went with mostly light food and desserts instead of a full lunch. Of course I had a ton of stuff left over, so please come to my house and eat some fudge and candy. I bought a bunch of pink candy from Amazon and Oriental Trading to make the table extra pink.

Food table

Crown cookies, decorated by my mom and the kids

Tomato & cheese tea sandwiches

Recipe found here

Munchkin fruit skewers (these were totally gone)

Jello cups with pomegranate seeds (so sparkly!)

Sugar cookie cups with mint buttercream (the crowns are Wilton, I bought them at Michael’s)

Recipe found here (way prettier than mine, but mine were gone post party so they must have tasted OK)

Thumbprint cookies

Radish dip

Fruit “crowns”

Tex mex tortilla wraps – these were also ALL gone

Adapted from the recipe found here

Cake from Big Y. I highly recommend their bakery for your ridiculous cake needs.

Hot chocolate bar with grown-up options

Pink punch – strawberry soda, strawberry guava juice and raspberry sherbet

Enjoying her punch from fancy cups

Strawberry milk in “milk bottles” (frappuchino bottles)

Kids love straws

Fancy pink goblets to drink sparkling cider (from Oriental Trading Co)

Also a hit

For activities, I was counting heavily on the kids enjoying dress up and using their imaginations to entertain themselves. It actually went pretty well! I also had the printable coloring sheets that came with my Etsy set but didn’t get a picture. They’re really cute.

I started buying accessories for the Princess Makeover station a long time ago. Walmart and Target both have cute party sections where you can find costume jewelry and tattoos and crowns and things, and they often go on clearance to make room for new stuff. The temporary tattoos and the clip-in hair braids were two of the most popular items (I left out some sponge pieces and a small cup of water so grown ups could help with the tattoos).

Crowns, tiny hair clip crowns, hair extensions, rings, necklaces, bracelets, eye patches, foam swords and wands

Browsing her options

That chalkboard was the train schedule sign for Evan’s train birthday

One of his many tats

I also collected all the princess dress up I could find. Some hand-me-downs, some consignment store finds, some gifts, and some purchased over the last year meant we had a ton of wardrobe choices for our guests. The pink dress Caroline is wearing and the knight costume Evan is wearing were both awesome Costumes.com deals, purchased for $5 after Halloween. We now have an extremely complete collection of size 3-5T princess dresses.

We even dressed up our baby friends as princesses

Pirate-knights

Handsome

Caroline was happy to share her dresses, although at first she kept saying “You have the same dress as me!”

Friend hugs

So blurry, but so happy (That’s my dad)

We are a no judgement princess zone. There were only 3 boys in attendance so they got into the spirit too.

Caroline has been talking for WEEKS about how everyone was going to sing Happy Birthday to her and how excited she was for that part, so please excuse the ridiculous number of photos.

Her brother helped her blow them out.

The cake topper opens into a purse/castle toy and Caroline has been playing with it ever since. Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Well, that was over 1000 words about a pretty simple princess birthday, so I’ll wrap it up by saying thank you to my parents and E’s parents who both came to help basically just for the party. I could never have gotten all the food made and the house in decent shape without them. It means a ton to me that our family understands and supports my birthday party addiction. And thank you to all our friends who braved the snowstorm to come celebrate with Princess Caroline – she had a truly magical birthday and it wouldn’t have been special without all of you!

One more of the birthday girl:

 p.s. Caroline’s actual birthday isn’t until Thursday, so I’m going to be totally fine until then. But expect a SERIOUS meltdown on Friday about my baby turning THREE.

Where the Wild Things Are is one of our very favorite books, read over and over without complaint every time one of the kids climbs into my lap with our well-loved copy. Evan can recite most of the story by heart and shouts all of Max’s lines with the enthusiasm of a child who really understands what a wild rumpus means.

It’s a beautiful story, so beautiful some nights I can barely get through it without choking up. I hope my kids always have amazing, heartbreaking, wild adventures but remember to come home for good things to eat in the end.

Sometimes a wolf suit is all you need for an adventure in your own little yard. Well, a wolf suit, an apple box from BJ’s and a little imagination. Two dowels, an old pillow case and a gallon jug full of sand for a sail doesn’t hurt, but mother nature can provide all the extras you need to turn your box in a private boat.

In a month full of new toys and big trips and dollars spent on experiences and cider donuts and candy and costumes, it’s nice to remember 3 year olds don’t need much to be happy. Just a place where someone loves them best of all.

Costume from PBKids