Par-tay.

Labor Day weekend was party weekend at our house.

No, really, it was. Yes, I realize my story is a bit dated. Go with it.

First up was Marina's birthday party, part 4. If you know Marina, you know that her birthday is much more of a season than a day, and you'd best not miss out on all of it. So, just like picture make-up day, we had a birthday party do-over.
Marina said that the only thing missing from all her other birthday parties was a cake with candles.

We fixed that.
Lily accepted that it was "Rina's birthday party" surprisingly well, and "Rina" shared her birthday party surprisingly well.
We checked in with Tere's nephews on her iphone, you know, the video one on the commercials. How cool is that?
We had Saturday to recover from one party and by Sunday we were ready for the next. Khan's cousins were visiting from Michigan, and everyone got together at our place.
Tey and her husband just got a new DSLR, and so I got to talk about cameras a lot like I know what I'm talking about. The blind leading the blind, my friend. That's what this is.
I guess we need more table space.

All of Lily's cousins were there, too. And therefore, all of Lily's toys came out from hibernation.


The boys played in the kitchen where they belong.


And the girls played with the dollhouse.


By the end of the evening there were lots of laughs and lots of smiles. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. (Sorry, Tey.)
Yeah, lots of smiles. ;-)
And some especially adorable good-bye kisses.

Cute stuff. Videos.

Just emptying out that other camera tonight. It used to be THE camera, and now we just use it for videos.

So, two videos tonight. This one was from Wisconsin, trying to get Lils in her jammies while she sang in "her" chair.




And this one is from just a couple of hours ago. Enjoy.

Cleaning the house when a toddler is there.

When I switched to a part time schedule, of course it was to spend more time with Lily. But also, I wanted to spend a little more time with the poor, neglected house.

9.5 days out of 10, it looks like we've been hit by a hurricane, but we have not. (And you just keep away, Igor. I see you out there with your unfortunate name.) I really can't even blame the baby entirely; we just aren't in the neat freak category.

But surely there has to be a happy balance between hurricane aftermath and neat freak, right? So, in my effort to find said happy balance, I figured I'd be able to give the house a little love with my extra day. Lily is getting to an age where it is a little easier to do my own thing, too. Even still, if I were smart, I would clean during her nap. But I'm not smart; I like to nap too.

A lot of the time, she'll just play in her room or with her puzzles or something, and she'll give me some time. Many times, though, left to her own devices, she makes more messes than I can keep up with.

Like when she tries to feed the cat. In case you wondered, the perfect recipe to turn dry cat food into the mushy stuff, is one bowl of water, 1/3 cup of cat food, 2 tablespoons of cat food, and a Lily spoon, but that's just for presentation.

Or maybe she'll give the cat some treats. All of them.

Perhaps she'll stamp my pink ink pad all over the window sill.

Or serve herself some potato chips.

She was most pleased with herself.

So, it seems that the better strategy is to enlist her help. It seems there is a small window between being a newborn lump and an apathetic older kid during which kids actually want to help out around the house.

Who am I to squander such a golden time?

Lily is very good at taking the empty cans out for recycling.

She also likes to wipe down our (hideous) burgundy counters.

She wanted to do the whole thing, but she couldn't reach it. She impatiently demanded to be moved. Sigh.

She vacuums with me.
Then, I broke the dishwasher, and we had to wash dishes the old-fashioned way. I had this brilliant idea that I could wash and she could dry.




No, really, can you believe I was stupid enough to think I could put a toddler in front of a sink full of bubbly water, and she'd be content to just dry?

So I revised my plan and just let her fill her cup, empty her cup, fill, empty, and so on. It kept her busy while I got the rest of the dishes done, and all I had to do was wipe up some wet floors.
Her favorite household chore, though, is most definitely the laundry.
She fills it up, and then watches the water pour in.
And the soap!
Then she watches. And watches.

Real men wear pink.

And play with pink kitchens and dollhouses. And wear frilly yellow barrettes.

My mom tells me that when we were small, my little brother would play anything just to play with me. He played with dolls, he played with Barbies, he played with whatever I told him to, and he never cared if it wasn’t “for boys.”

Same thing with Lily’s daddy. If Lily wants him to wear the pink hat, he wears the pink hat and ask for the matching purse. Sometimes he even wears her pink pajamas as a hat. (He’ll probably make me take this one down as soon as he sees it, but I couldn’t help myself. In fairness, though, he was trying to get her to put her pajamas on. Pretty sure the strategy didn’t work.)

So if she wants to have a tea party, he holds his pinky as high as he can and asks for more sugar.

They pose with the giant shoe at the girly salon.

They play with dolls, and they play dress up.

She likes to be the princess who stands on her daddy.

And just because I promised I wouldn't put this on Facebook and it fits so well right here, Uncle Marcus has been know to sport the pink hat, too.

I always wanted my girl. I imagined myself dressing up with her, playing dolls with her, painting my toenails bright pink with her. Strangely enough, I never even thought of how much fun it would be to watch her do these things with her daddy, never caring that these things aren’t “for boys.”

Portaiture will never be my thing.

No matter how badly I want it to be.

This is (finally) the last of my posts from my midwest trip. (The video was posted by Khan. Poor guy was bored and archiving old files.)

So yeah. Even with our pro pics, I thought I'd try to take some portraits of Lily in her great grandma's chair again this year. It didn't go as planned.

I just wanted ONE perfect picture. Not asking too much, right?

Wrong.

Cute smile. Too bad she's not looking at the camera and lost a hand. Nice composition, Kate.

The best I could do to get her to look near the camera was to enlist Khan's help in "catch the binky."

I'd hoped that she might offer me the flower. That'd be a cute portrait, right?

We'll never know.



Get the flower, mom.
What happened to my hand?

Best I could do, right here.