February 2008 Archives

Hope your 36th is the best yet!

Maddie found my To-Do list today and added one of her own:

GO IN D SDOR

In other words, "Go in the store." She wanted to go shopping today. I adore watching her little mind develop and she makes sense of words and letters.

Also, she added something else, with a little spelling help from me. It looks like this:

FT VALENTI
AND CRA
MAKE ARTS
NES

Now guess what that one says. "Make arts and craft valentines." She's still getting the hang of sentence structure and how to line words up. She'll get to the end of the line and randomly choose somewhere else in the page to complete the word. It makes for a great game. She's such a funny kid.

I overheard Maddie and Josie talking this afternoon.

Maddie: Okay, Jo, I'm Clifford and you're Tivo.

For those of you that don't know, Clifford the Big Red Dog has a dog friend named T-Bone, not Tivo.

Could it be any more obvious that TV plays a big role in our lives?

Little Imp.

Josie turned 3 this past Friday, on February 1st

(and not the 2nd, as almost everyone -- including myself -- seems to forget. Maddie was born on 10/10, but we have to remind ourselves Josie WASN'T born on 2/2.)

We celebrated that evening by going out to eat at Don Pablo's. Josie requested cheese quesadillas for her birthday dinner, specifically Moe's, but we were hoping for something a little nicer so we switched restaurants. Our main reason for switching, though, was to go to a place that would sing Happy Birthday to her and kind of make a big deal about it.

Ready for her cheese quesadillas.

The dinner started out well enough, but went south from there. Apparently, our waitress was brand new and really had no idea what to do. Of course Bill and I waited tables for years, so we are usually more than understanding with servers because we've been there ourselves. This time, though, it was as if the waitress literally walked in off the street. She didn't know anything on the menu and actually asked us a few questions about it. Annoying, but humorous enough, right?

Well, at the end of our meal, Bill asked if they had any kind of birthday dessert they could bring Josie, explaining it was her 3rd birthday. She said she could bring a scoop of ice cream, so we ordered one for Josie and another for Maddie. After she'd walked away, I left the table to go and ask her about having everyone sing for Josie when she brought out the dessert. "Oh, we don't do that." Hmm, odd since we'd been here before and had heard them sing for the very next table, but maybe they'd changed their policies, so, oh well.

The ice cream comes out and is tossed on the table, along with our check. Bill stops her and mentions we would like to order dessert too. He orders the Chocolate Volcano cake for us. She looks at him and scrunches her face up as if disgusted and says, "What's that?" Bill pointed to it on the menu and explained what it was. "Um, okayyyy," and she walks away.

Innocent enough. We're a little annoyed at this point, but whatever, right? A few minutes later another waiter brings out our dessert. While he's at the table Bill asks him about how they celebrate birthdays. The waiter tells us that you get a free sopapilla dessert. We didn't get that, but okay, no big deal. Then Bill asks if they still do singing. "Oh yeah, of course we do."

At this point, the momma bear in me just came out and I said, um, very forcefully, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?" Okay, first of all I'm not the type to be mean to any kind of server. Like I said, I've been there before, right? But I was, excuse my French, pissed with a capital P. We came here specifically to get some special treatment for Josie and almost didn't get it. Bill took over and asked if they could, indeed, come out and sing for her. "Sure. No problem."

A few minutes later the entire wait staff comes to our table singing Happy Birthday to Josie, who seemed to have turned into a statue at the very first word. Bill and I watched anxiously wondering if she was going to burst out crying at any moment. Luckily, she just sat, mesmerized by the whole thing. Once it was over, she then smiled really big and was very excited about the whole thing.

After that our waitress came back to our table to bring our check. She sheepishly said, "Sorry about that. I didn't know we did that, and I thought we were so busy that the other servers wouldn't have time to sing." It's okay, no problem, but how can you not know about it and also not think the other servers would have time?

So that was Josie's birthday dinner. I felt really bad afterwards for the waitress. It was her first day and I will forever be remembered as "that awful customer that got angry because I didn't sing to her kid." We walked over to the bookstore after that and had a nice night with the girls reading some books and just hanging out.

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Saturday was Josie's birthday party. We kept it really small this year -- only family and a few very close family friends. It was nice and really relaxed. Josie had really wanted a My Little Pony party (she's really into horses right now) so we had all the decorations and of course a pony cake.

The weather was gorgeous, so the kids got a chance to play outside. One of Josie's gifts was some soccer gear from Uncle Todd, so she got a chance to kick her new soccer ball around as well. She was especially excited about her new shin guards and ended up wearing them for most of the party.

She got lots of wonderful gifts, but one of her other favorites was her new bicycle from Poppa. She was so excited to have her own big girl bike like Maddie. She hopped right on and pedaled all over the house. I later ended up moving some of the furniture so she could ride back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. It was amazing to see the difference between her and Maddie when they first got their bikes. Josie is able to pedal the bike really well (and fast!) already and even has no trouble turning it around. Poor Maddie has nearly no "meat" on her legs, so pedaling her bike takes a little more effort. She's just starting to get the hang of it. I'm constantly amazed by how different two siblings can be.

Today I sat on the front porch and watched as my two little girls rode their bikes back and forth on the driveway. It was such a bittersweet moment as it seemed like only yesterday that they couldn't even walk by themselves. Sigh.

A very Happy Birthday to our little Josephine Maeve. She is the most delightful mix of shy and outgoing, serious and funny, timid and brave. I've never known anyone like her. In one instance she's hiding behind my legs, peering out at strangers, and the next she's showing off her "modeling" poses to anyone that will watch. She makes us laugh so hard that we cry. She gets easily startled by loud noises, yet wants you to turn the music up "louder, Mama, LOUDER!!!" when she's dancing. She wakes up grumpier than her Daddy, yet can immediately turn on a smile that makes your heart melt. I'm so proud to be her mommy.

Sassy-pants.