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Miss Keira's 3rd Birthday Party

At Keira Jane's third birthday party, there was:

1. One incredible, delectable birthday cake.
It was, without doubt, the best cake I have ever made or eaten. I had to leave this cake behind the day after the party as I departed for a wedding in Washington, and I dreamed of it nightly. It was a mash up of three great ideas that made cake magic when combined all together:

• Shape idea came from this blog. It's two bundt cakes! I took a simpler approach with the M&M's (randomly stuck on, with help from Keira, instead of in rows). Custom colored M&M's found at Zurcher's.
• Bundt cake recipe came from here.
• Frosting recipe came from here.  

2. One balloon curtain.
Much cheaper than helium...and adorable to boot. 

3. One very excited little girl, who had to be kept away from these three presents for just three hours.And even that was too long. 

4. Dozens of pretzel butterfly appetizers.
These are not only easier than they look, but also better tasting! (Granted, I didn't expect them to taste good at all.) These are a combination of fruit roll ups (which stick to the pretzels all by themselves!), melted white chocolate, and Gusher's fruit snacks cut in half. Find the recipe here. 

5. One time-saving tip: 
Unroll a bunch of the roll-ups, stack them up, and cut the wing shapes a bunch at a time with kitchen shears.

6. One blurry photo of a tiny archer.
Can you tell she's obsessed with the movie Brave? She often says, "I am Medida, first born of [unintelligible], and I'm shootin' for me own hand!"
Note: I'm trying to learn how to use my nice camera again, instead of relying on the iPhone all of the time.

7. One little girl who got very embarrassed by the attention of everyone singing to her.
I don't think I've ever seen this expression on her before, and I love it to pieces. We tried to tell her that princesses "do not put their weapons on the table," but she just wouldn't listen.

8. Two extra helpers to blow out the candles.
This time they weren't trick candles, like the ones I inadvertently bought for her 2nd birthday. Mean mommy. 

9. One happy family.
And a whole bunch of guests we failed to photograph. Sorry guys. Thanks for coming.

10. One tired little princess at the end of the party. 
She does have a Merida wig, but she wouldn't leave it on for long. 

11. Three years of birthday memories.
Looking forward to many happy returns. 

The ABC's of Keira: E

E is a letter in Keira's name, which means she has a cute little jar filled with items that start with "E" (featured on my Books & Crafts web show recently). We plan to gather tiny items on our travels, near and far, to fill up the jar. 

I can't wait until she's old enough to understand the game, and the jars get fuller with authentic souvenirs that we find together. So far, her jar contains a wind-up walking Easter egg, two elephants, an eel, the Earth, and a tiny eagle.

Wind-up Easter egg not pictured, because true to its Easter-egg nature, it was hiding under the couch at the time.

She's probably going to be an extrovert, if I can judge by the number of strangers she yells "hi" and "bye" to when we're out and about.

She loves elephants (see above). They are definitely her favorite animal at the zoo, and I promise I didn't deliberately influence her in this way, just because of Ella Publishing Co. (But I'm certain there are some environmental factors at play, as there are more than a few elephant-themed items in the house. Far more elephants than, say, rhinos or ostriches.) Right now, at 23 months, she pronounces it "ephant," and she loves singing that lame elephant song from Barney.

She has an adorable pal named Emmy, 4 months her junior, who lives just down the street. They play very well together, and they alternate being bossy to each other, so it works out well. My favorite story is when they were taking turns standing on an upside-down saucer sled, playing their own version of that game "king of the hill." At one point when Emmy was on the sled and Keira wanted a turn, she very craftily walked up and hugged Emmy from behind, causing me and Emmy's mom to say, "Awwwww!" But then, while maintaining the hug, Keira very gently walked Emmy off of the sled before proudly taking her position as "king of the sled."

Emmy and Keira at ages 5 months and 9 months, respectively.

Keira and Emmy "sharing" the Little Tikes car at ages 22 months and 18 months,.

Also, at church, if they ever spot each other amongst the pews, you'll hear "Emmy!" and "Keewa!" ringing through the congregation, kind of like "Marco!... Polo!"

One of Keira's very favorite things to do is to play with containers that have lids, which she calls "eds." She loves nothing more than to take off an "ed" and put it back on again, over and over again. This obsession has been in place ever since she was just barely discovering her opposable thumbs.

Our biggest challenge so far with our Keira has been with her eating. She doesn't appear to consume enough calories to sustain a small sparrow, but somehow she's still growing, at a slow and steady pace. No matter what pediatrician-recommended tricks we try (and we've tried them all) she simply won't eat very much of anything. Recently while my mom was watching her on date night, I called to check on things. "What's she doing right now?" I asked. "Not eating dinner," she replied. Typical.

Despite what you'd suspect from the previous paragraph, she has endless energy. Like most toddlers, she runs everywhere she goes and dances everywhere else. She has her own signature move wherein she keeps the top half of her body fairly still while she rapidly stomps her feet, lifting her knees high in the air. She looks like a Riverdance marionnette, almost weightless, as if being supported by invisible strings. And since she weighs next to nothing, well, it can't be too hard to pull off. I've tried the move myself and I don't look quite so weightless.

Note to my family: No doubt I have forgotten a very important person whose name begins with "E." If I have and this person is you, I invite you to inform me so I can update this post and thus appease your suffering.

Next up: the letter "F," to be posted sooner or later.

The ABC's of Keira is a blog series that started in January 2012 and has no particular schedule, so who knows how long it will take me to get through the entire alphabet! See also:

The ABC's of Keira: D
The ABC's of Keira: C
The ABC's of Keira: B
The ABC's of Keira: A

 

The ABC's of Keira: D

Keira Jane's very first residence (and only residence so far) is the red brick house on Diamond Way, where she has spent many blissful hours chasing the dog around the backyard. She said "Dada" long before she said "Mama," and in fact called BOTH of us "Dada" for quite some time. One of my favorite sounds in the world is her shrieking an excited, high-pitched, and almost breathless "Daddy!" when he comes home from work each day. I predict that she will be a little Daddy's Girl for sure.

Grandpa Don (aka "Papa" Don) is one of Keira's favorite people on earth. When she sees his yellow truck in front of the house, she nearly starts shaking with excitement and runs around the room yelling "Papa! Papa!" She spends a couple of hours with grandpa Don and grandma Bev every Monday morning, and ever since she was itty bitty, he'd carry her around the house and yard for hours, patiently giving names to everything they see. "Keira, this is a lamp. It turns on and off like this. Yes, that's a mirror. Can you see the baby in the mirror? Keira, that's a school bus out the window. It's picking up all the kids to take them home."

Also, the two of them dance together. Grandpa walks to the CD closet and allows Keira to pick any CD she wants (which might be Emmylou Harris or George Strait, or someone in between). He puts the music on, and the two of them waltz and/or bounce around the living room. I'll never forget peering around the corner and seeing the two of them, 80 years apart but truly kindred spirits, gliding around the blue carpet to the sounds of classic country.

Even when she's not in the arms of grandpa Don, this girl loves to dance, as demonstrated by this video from when she was 11 months old:

She also has an extra grandpa who lives next door to us, Mr. Dominguez, who gave her a little Santa dress for Christmas and just lights up like a Christmas tree every time he sees her. He also gave her two ceramic ducks that his wife painstakingly painted years ago, just because she so admired a couple of larger ceramic ducks that adorned his coffee table one day during a visit. (She'd point and announce "guck! guck!"). Such kindness.

Keira has a cousin named Derek, who's five years older, but so kind and gentle with her. When we go visit them in Arizona, he is just fascinated by everything she does. He even offers input on how we should style her hair. ("I like it when she has a horn on top of her head!" Horn = single ponytail like Pebbles from the Flintstones.)

Keira with cousin Derek when she was just a few weeks old.

Her uncle Dan was the first of her non-grandparent relatives to pay her a visit when she was brand, brand new. He's a devoted uncle, for sure, and he can always get little "KJ" (his favorite nickname for her) to laugh. His name was also the first of my siblings' names Keira managed to pronounce. Granted, it's not super hard to say "Dan," if you already know how to say "Dad," but Uncle Dan still claims a solid victory over Aunt Alli in this arena.

I can't believe how small she was!

Because her mama fell in love with the scent of Dreft, Keira's clothing is still washed separately to retain that baby-fresh scent as long as possible—19 months and counting.

Before I go, Keira's Aunt Alli (or "Addie" as Keira calls her) told me there's one D word I simply could not leave out of this post, at that word is: dainty. Yes, our Keira has always been a little peanut, weighing in at just 20 pounds at 19 months old. By contrast, she has a baby cousin, one year and 3 days younger than she is, who is now tipping the scales at 22 pounds. While I definitely think she's a tough cookie, she's downright delicate compared to her two closest cousins in age, who are both boys and both large and in charge.

Little Keira Jane sandwiched between Graham (1 year younger) and Townes (8 months older).

The ABC's of Keira: C

Keira loves fruit of all kinds, but especially cherries, and her mom loves it when Mt. Rainier cherries are in season, because they don't stain clothes and fingers. Dried cranberries are also a favorite.

The first baby sign she used on her own was for cracker (take one fist and knock it on the opposite elbow), and she'd loudly shout "cackoo" when she wanted one. But now she's decided "cackoo" also means cookie, snack, and just food in general, so it's not always easy to produce the item she's actually trying to ask for. She mastered the word cheese fairly early as well (although, oddly, she doesn't care for cheddar, only white cheeses). She pronounces it exactly like one of her other favorite things, namely keys.

Her first favorite song was by a hippie band called Canned Heat. As young as 4 months old, she'd start dancing and bobbing whenever dad played the song "Goin Up the Country" for her. (Her daddy rediscovered this long-forgotten song in the movie The Blind Side.) And it is a sight to watch this girl dance. I think her spine must be made of rubber.

She loves to color and draw, but not on paper, unfortunately. She'll keep the crayon or other drawing implement near the paper for about 30 seconds, and then she wants to draw in 3d. And nothing is safe.

She has a cousin named Carson who is a full generation older than she is.

We dressed her as a cow for her second Halloween, which was somewhat ironic, since milk and other dairy products were problematic for her at the time. She's now outgrown both the costume and the dairy sensitivity.

And while cute hardly seems adequate, that's a word I simply can't leave out. She'll always be my cutie-pie.

The ABC's of Keira: B

Until the last few months, when Keira really started experimenting with sounds and language, I didn't realize how important the letter B is to a baby. And since it's such a simple sound to make, I wonder if that's how babies came to be called babies in the first place.

Our blond and blue-eyed darling now says a handful of words, that all sound the same ("buh-buh" or "bah-bah"), but I can distinguish between them fairly easily by context.

She says:

baby (referring to herself, to her Baby Stella doll, and to random babies she sees in pictures)
bye-bye
bellybutton (sounds a bit more like "bey-buhhh")
bottle
binkie (sounds like bi-bi)
booby*

*Being a bottle-fed baby from the start, Keira never had a real need to be fully acquainted with this word, but one day a bit of mom's cleavage was escaping the confines of her clothing, and Keira poked it and made her signature inquiring "uh?" sound. Since we spend all day pointing at and identifying things, mom (aka me) replied "booby," quite absentmindedly. She plucked out her binkie and repeated "buh-buh." And, unlike the many other words we say all day long, this one has stuck. It's time to be careful what I say around the little sponge. She now also pokes other people's boobies and says "buh-buh" without prompting. I just grin and shrug.

In other B news, Keira's adoring grandma Beverly keeps her dressed beautifully in fashionable duds. Keira has an aunt Becky, who adores her too, and cousins named Breanna and Brock. And she has a favorite bear that she cuddles during naptime. Her birthmom, Anneliese, has a larger bear just like this one, and we took pictures of Keira with her baby bear every month until her first birthday.

The ABC's of Keira: A

A is a very important letter in Keira's little life.

First of all, she was adopted at just 2 days old. The gift of adoption has blessed more lives than she, or her birth parents, may ever know.

Her mother's name is Angie and her birthmom (or "tummy mommy" which might be the term we'll use until she's old enough to understand this in more depth) is Anneliese. She has seven aunts who love her more than words can say.

And of course the word adorable has to make it onto my list. Her perfect little features, so unique to my little girl, strike me daily with wonder. And yes, I even think it's cute when she screeches like a baby pterodactyl all day long. Annoying? Yes, but adorable too.

All in all, I am in awe at the blessings and challenges of motherhood. Perhaps it is because I had to wait for so long, but this journey, though difficult, has been immensely rewarding. And I look forward to what the future brings.

 

Tiny baby Keira, with her aunt Alli, wearing a little knit hat from her aunt Karste.

About the A illustration
A while back, I found a cool old children's book at a thrift store (D.I. for you locals) called Peppermint Fence, which I promptly tore apart to make a notebook. But I had to save this cute alphabet section, "Nonsense Alphabet," in the back of the book for some future project. When I recently stumbled across the torn-out pages, I had the idea to write about Keira's life, one letter at a time.

I'll post a few new letters per month until I complete all 26. Feel free to join me in this journaling project, and post links to your own letter-by-letter ruminations in the comments section!