Carissa's Birthday

This like my last post is getting done later than expected, but I just got really busy and I'm using my 3 day weekend to get caught up on everything. This year for Carissa's birthday we did friend party and then a family dinner. This was the first time that Carissa had a birthday party with some of her friends from school. It was a learning experience for me, but I think that everything went pretty well. We had the party at Chuck E. Cheese and Carissa had 4 of her friends from school come out of the 12 kids in her class that we invited. I thought that more kids might come, but didn't mind at all that there ended up being less. Carissa had a really good time there with the exception of when she was the center of attention in the dining area. I think that it took her by surprise and that she wasn't sure what to do.


After Chuck E. Cheese, it was rest/nap time and then on to gymnastics class. After gymnastics we had a family dinner at Applebees, Carissa's pick. At Applebees they sang to Carissa and gave her a free sundae, which she could actually eat this year. (It contains eggs.) Then we went home to get ready for bed and school the next morning.

Birthday cake

This year for Carissa's birthday I decided to try to make a cake that was egg free and more interesting/decorated than just a rectangle. So I bought a metal cake mold in the shape of a castle to make a princess castle cake. As it turned out I didn't need to make it without eggs, but I still made the castle cake. When it came time to turn the cake over and have it come out of the mold only half of it came out, that was my first problem. Then I tried to decorate it and it turns out that I had frosting that wasn't good for decorating, that was my second problem. So, I learned a couple of lessens for the next time that I make a cake and I think that Carissa's cake turned out okay. Carissa thought that her cake was wonderful and I figured that her opinion is really the only one that matters at the moment. I included two pictures taken on different settings on my camera, I can't decide which setting looks better. If you think one looks better than the other let me know.

Eggs

So, now that we have had to monitor all of Carissa's food since she was about 1 1/2 years old for her allergies to eggs and walnuts we hopefully have good news. Since the beg. we were told by the doctor that a lot of kids will out grow the egg allergy by the time they are 5 years old, so as her birthday got close I started counting the days and hoping. It is just so sad to tell your child that they can't have cake at their friends birthdays or other similar events. We tried to still make things nice for her, but it wasn't the same as actually getting to eat what everyone else was eating. So, this past weekend we decided to start experimenting. We rubbed egg on her skin and nothing happened. Then we let her eat pancakes made with eggs, and she was fine. Since then she has tried a doughnut, a toaster strudel, a Twinkie, ice cream at Applebee's, and I made her birthday cake with eggs this time. So far she hasn't had any reactions, and she is so excited to get to try all the new foods. She now knows that she doesn't like toaster strudels or Twinkies, but at least this way it is her own preference. We still have to watch out for walnuts, but that is a lot easier than eggs. And for now I'm still want to wait a little while before telling her school that eggs are okay.

Five

It has been five years since Carissa was born. It seems to have gone by so fast yet I know that there have been days where time just couldn't go fast enough. Carissa has been a wonderful person to have in my life and I'm sure that she will continue to be. She has pushed me to learn new things and to think differently about things. By the time she was about 28 hours old she had me feeling like a complete failure at being her mom. (I think hormones may have contributed to that as well.) But, from there things got a little better and within a few days I knew that Carissa knew what she needed even if it didn't fit with what I had learned about babies previously or what any doctor said. Then things got a lot better.It has been a bit of a bumpy road, but things keep going and overall still get better. Carissa is very bright and loves learning new things. She is also very social and more outgoing than I have ever been. She is a great big sister and looks out for her brother. Also she likes to try to reason her way to whatever it is that she wants, which I rather enjoy listening to and sometimes she makes more sense than we do. It has been a great adventure being Carissa's mom and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am both sad and excited to think that she will be starting kindergarten soon, my baby is just getting so big.

Dinosaurs

Last Friday, January 16th Carissa, Gabe, my parents, Josh, Alyssa, and I all went to see Walking with Dinosaurs Live. It was a lot of fun and the kids both really liked it. I couldn't take pictures during the show, because they said that flash photography might upset the dinosaurs. But, it was definitely neat to see dinosaurs that were life sized and moved. Gabriel was disappointed though that he couldn't actually walk with the dinosaurs, so the name of the show is a little misleading to a 3 year old.

Too Bad

Today, I was helping the kids clean up their play room this morning. And when we were almost finished cleaning Carissa was holding a Barbie in her hands and getting it dressed to put it away when she said, "Mom, it is too bad that you had kids." Now, that completely threw me and anymore half the time when she says Mom she is just playing pretend and not even talking to me, so I asked her if she was talking to me. And she said, "yes, it is too bad that you had kids." At this point I was totally confused and wondering where that had come from. So I asked her why she thought that it was too bad that I had kids. Her answer was, "Because you have to feed them and take care of them and stuff." I don't remember exactly what we said after that but pretty quickly she was off on another subject. And after having all the rest of the day to think about it I think that maybe she came to that because early on when we started cleaning she was getting distracted a lot and I had told her that if she wanted me to help then she needed to keep cleaning, because I didn't want to spend all day cleaning up their toys.

Home Show

This last weekend was the home show at the expo center here, and I worked with my family there on Sat. and Sun. But, since the kids and I had free time on Friday afternoon the three of us went to the home show together to visit and walk around and look at everything. We spent a couple of hours there and the kids overall did really well. Gabe started to have a couple of issue right before we left, but nothing too bad. They both had a lot of fun at Grandpa's mini casino playing the slots at the home show. (It isn't actually a casino, my dad sells refurbished slot machines for in home use-game/rec rooms usually.) And Carissa and Gabe have grown up playing with the machines. Also they had an area for kids with a bunch of big Lego's and Carissa and Gabe built a tower about twice their height by standing on a chair and reaching as high as they could. By the way, Gabe did his own hair that morning in a spiky up do and when it dried about half of it went flat, the other part stayed up all day.