Happy 3rd Bethday!

I've been meaning to post pictures from the two Bethday parties, which were, respectively, two and three weeks ago now. (I've been a bit busy with my dad in town — see next post).

On her birthday we opened up family presents in the morning and then had our neighbors and her uncle David, aunt Chelsea and cousin Spencer come for cake in the evening. Cute little Beff-Beff! She looked absolutely radiant all day. And grown up! All the attention got to her as the day wore on, but she did a pretty good job of holding up under pressure. She just got very, very quiet toward the end there.

As for the friend party...we stole the idea from Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly, which is one of Bethie's favorite, favorite books. We took around cute butterfly invitations to the kids she has playdates with (Beth pasted construction paper squares to the backs to make butterfly "mosaics") but had to change the date/time because two of the three little invitees couldn't come! I think three is about the last time ever that you can change a kid's birthday party to a different day and have her not notice and not really care.

I baked and decorated a butterfly cake, which I have to post a photo of simply because no one but the little butterfly girls (and Scott) ever actually saw in its entirety. The girls decorated their own butterfly wings and helped me make their antennae, and we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and then played wrap-the-girls-up-in-a-toilet-paper-cocoon and let-them-burst-out-as-a-beautiful-butterfly, and we played musical chairs and hide-and-seek and red light/green light, and they were served (but did not eat due to the excitement level) peanut butter sandwiches and string cheese and carrot sticks arranged to look like butterflies, and of course there was cake and a lot of crawling through our butterfly tunnel and then their moms came and I was EXHAUSTED. Really, that's what it felt like: one big adorable run-on sentence of a birthday party. Scott stayed home to help (hooray!) and Sarah blissfully napped through the whole thing. I'd made a list of possible games to play, and we ended up going through ALL of them and then some. It was just warm enough to go outside and run around for a few minutes, so we even got in some good backyard time.

Bethie had a glorious time. She still talks about her butterfly birthday party. She's so, so thrilled with being fwee.