The Party Before the Party

On Saturday we celebrated our friend Chloe's first birthday together with her parents. I think I mentioned this before, but Chloe's mom, Erika, was my RA my Freshman year at Calvin. They moved to this area about a year ago and it has been a lot of fun hanging out with them ever since.

I was a little nervous about how Hadley would behave at Chloe's party because we've been talking so much about Hadley's upcoming birthday (for those of you who don't have my daughter's birthday written down on your calendars, Hadley's turning THREE this Friday). When I told Hadley we were going to a birthday party for Chloe, Hadley right away asked two things: 1)How old is Chloe, and 2) can we get her a present. She also wanted to know if there would be balloons there, and I said we'd have to wait and see (and made a mental note to make sure there are balloons at Hadley's party).

Here are the three girls playing with - A BALLOON! Looking at the picture, I'm a little concerned my girls are a little too excited about the balloon and forgot that the birthday girl is sitting right next to them. Chloe's probably thinking, "I don't think I'll be having these crazies over again anytime soon."

Chloe is trying to talk to Harper about what it feels like to be 1. Harper still has a few weeks before she hits single digits, so she needs to listen to Chloe and understand what her responsibilities are as a 1 year old.

Here's the birthday girl waiting for a cupcake from Cake Love.

She doesn't quite understand what how delicious these cupcakes are. Erika put a puff on it to try and get Chloe to taste it, but Chloe wasn't too interested. I remember that's how Hadley reacted on her first birthday as well.

It was a fun night, regardless of who had a cupcake, and we were glad to be a part of it.

On Sunday the four of us went to Target in the afternoon to get some odds and ends for Halloween costumes, and birthday party goodies. I won't tell you what each of us is going to be for Halloween, but I will say that out of the four of us, Jesse is the most excited to have a chance to dress up. And I will also say that his costume borders on being more insane then the Magnum P.I. incident of '03.

We were putting shoes on Harper, when Hadley spotted a pair of glittery red ballet flats. It was just about the time when we were ready to move on to other parts of the store, so Jesse said, "OK, let's get going." And Hadley said, "Let me just try these shoes on, and you can tell me how I look, Daddy."

As a mother, you hope for these kinds of moments. You take your daughter shopping, you try and express the excitement of picking out a great pair of shoes, or a great fitting pair of jeans. You know, you model this behavior. But you just never really know if it's going to sink in. Yesterday I realized that I'm doing an OK job.