Ophelia is Seven!

Tonight I was watching a few of the older videos of the kids, when Ophelia was just a tiny four year old, talking so well, being such a sweet big sister, always dancing or moving, never shy of the camera...This past weekend my sweet little girl has turned seven! In her own words, she is a big girl now! Sigh. In everything that she does, she strives to be independent. I don't need to meet her at the school bus stop at the end of the school day any more, she officially can walk herself home (despite it being a tiny short walk, it brought a lot of pride for Ophelia to be able to do it on her own). I can easily delegate responsibilities to her and fully trust that she will do what I asked her to do. She loves to do lists (the apple didn't fall far from tree here), and loves to help me with anything, cooking is one of her faves! Ophelia is very polite, still loves to move and dance, and is an AMAZING big sister. Most of the time the last fact is not as appreciated by Emerson as it should be. I love my "big" girl! And here is how her birthday weekend went.

Ophelia has been waking up lately to her own alarm in the mornings. This was mainly set up because the first week of school she would be so anxious about waking up on time that she would be up waaay before she (or me!!) should've been. So, on her birthday she woke herself up and got dressed for school. PJ, Emerson, and I got Krispy Kreme donuts for her classmates (two dozen of O-shaped goodness), a Happy Birthday balloon, and lunch from Chick-fil-a and came to visit Ophelia during her lunchtime. She sure felt special and loved! This was right before school:

After school Grandma took Ophelia shopping at the mall, AND got her ears pierced! While that was happening PJ took Emerson to the bouncy house. All this was planned out by the birthday girl weeks in advance. She not only included Emerson in her plans, but also got him a toy at the Disney store while shopping with Grandma. So super sweet and thoughtful! After the mall we all ate at Olive Garden, which she says is her favorite restaurant.

Saturday was the big Birthday Party day. I never meant for it to be big, but it turned out that we had 12 kids in total coming over to our house! I stressed out about it, but in the end two hours really flew by and it wasn't so bad after all.

The theme of the party was all about hamsters. For the past few months Ophelia has been saving money in order to buy a pet hamster. A nice lady from Craigslist gave her a cage for free, when she learned that Ophelia was saving money for it. It was a special day to go to the pet store a pick out her new pet, hamster Flurry. This brings our total family count to seven "people": PJ and myself, Ophelia and Emerson, Freddy the betta fish, Melody the robot vacuum cleaner, and Flurry the hamster :)

This cake was huge and delicious! We still have a third of it in our freezer. Yumm! Ophelia came up with a few hamster-related activities for the party: solving mazes, stuffing cheeks with marshmallows, and learning some neat hamster facts.

She also wanted to have a dance party, which we set up in the office, equipped with disco lights, loud music and her favorite songs. The kids had a blast!

The traditional gift opening ceremony:

And my favorite, but most time consuming part was the favor gifts. I found lots of used Zhu zhu pets on Craigslist, cleaned them up, fixed them up, and we gave them to each of the guests. They had such a great time playing with those things the last little bit of the party. It was a huge hit! If you don't know what those toys are, they are a motorized hamster toy that squeaks and goes all over the place. Kids loved them when they first came out about five years ago, but these days none of the stores carry them any longer, so that's why I had to go with Craigslist.

My favorite part of Ophelia's birthday was this: Babushka and Dedushka gave her an Amazon gift card to buy whatever she wanted to. The first thing she wanted to buy with it was a remote control car, but not for herself (because she already has one), but for Emerson because he has none!! So so incredibly thoughtful and sweet. Now we are starting a new family tradition thanks to Ophelia: the birthday girl or boy has to get a gift for the other one for their own birthday. Emerson was so very excited about it:

Even though Ophelia strives to be independent and a big girl at everything, there are lots of moments when she is still my sweet little girl. She tells me she believes in fairies. She has a fairy home set up in her room and keeps waiting for a fairy to move in. She also does not want to be independent when it comes to tucking herself in at night. When one evening I sent her to bed on her own, she came back a few minutes later in tears, telling me how much she misses me and wants me to come tuck her in.... I hope she will continue to feel that way for many more years to come!

Emerson's Fourth Bday Bash

We have arrived at this day! Emerson is 4. I had many doubts this past year (or even ever since he started walking) that this active little boy of mine would survive to be four. His energy combined with some clumsiness, plus the height he is at, put him at a minimum of one head trauma per day. Minimum!  This kid always has a bruise somewhere on his head. Heavenly Father is sure watching over him, he is not only alive and well, but he is smart, clever, curious, adventurous, and funny. I love being this boy's Mama! He makes me laugh every day. He easily gets upset or frustrated, but he just as easily snaps out of it and becomes my snuggly sweetheart. Emerson randomly tells me throughout the day: "Mama!" "What?" "I love you!" On occasional moments I sit down on the coach, he is sure to come and snuggle for a brief moment. He is so generous with his hugs and kisses. When I get down to his level, he often grabs my face in his little hands to say: "You are just so CUTE!", followed by a kiss. I love it! 

The other night he woke up around midnight for some reason. PJ went in to lay him back down. A few minutes later we heard yells from his room, but when we got closer we realized he was belting out the lyrics to Adele's Hello: "Hello from the over SIIIIIDE!!! I musav called a fausand TIIIMES!! To tell you I'm soooorry, for evryfing that I've done....." 

An update on hid thumbsucking...I think he is finally over it, cross my fingers. I suspect he still does it at night when he sleeps, unconsciously. But during the day, even for comfort, or boredom, or TV watching, or riding in the car, or even when hugging and cuddling, he has been really good at not doing it! Hope I will not jinx it, because we have done this before, where for two weeks he was so good at not sucking and then all of the sudden he reverted back to it.. We used the gross Mavala stuff to put on his nails. It lasts for about 4 days and slowly washed away. At this point he knows his thumb is not yucky any more, but consciously chooses not to suck it.

Emerson's bday was a blast this year! We rented a room at the HopnHappy bouncy house place, brought our decoration and food, and the place provided set up and clean up, and entertainment for the kids. I especially loved coming back home to our house with no cleaning to do! It was perfect! All the kids loved it. 

This is Tori, our future daughter-in-law :) Emerson said that he is going to marry Tori. So, now that's settled, we don't have to worry about that any more :) She sure is a cutie:

Emerson invited many people to his party. I kind of had to trim down his list a bit. He says his BFF is Garrett, who is 9, who is Emerson's role model in everything. Garrett was like the guest of honor. It was sweet of Garrett to play with Emerson a lot on all the bouncy things.

The party he wanted was Teenage Ninja turtles, so we had to have cheese pizza, of course. A big hit with the kids!

Besides the bounce things, the place has a huge foam pit. The kids spent the majority of their time swimming in these blocks:

Hailey and Emerson going doing the slide together:

Emerson thinks that the exact moment when your age actually changes is when you get "Happy Birthday" sung to you. So, when on my birthday, Ophelia kept trying to sing Happy Birthday to me, Emerson kept stopping her and getting mad, saying: "Mama is gonna turn if you sing!" So this is the "magical" moment when Emerson turned 4:

For homework this week, Ophelia had to write a paragraph about an important person. It could be someone famous, like Rosa Parks, or somebody she knows. Guess who she chose to write about? I glanced over and the was already on her third sentence writing about Emerson. So sweet! She loves her brother so much. Those two together can be so annoying to each other, but they are the best of friends. They play together all the time, make each other laugh, are silly together. Ophelia is Emerson's biggest protector (from other kids or even when we try to discipline him) or his gentle soother when he gets hurt.

Emerson told me today: "Mama, I am almost going to turn five!" Not quite, buddy! But we will get there, one bruise at a time :)