Kira celebrates her 3rd birthday

With all of the festivities for Calvin's 1st birthday, I didn't want Kira to not have a special celebration of her own. After all, she turned THREE this year (she likes showing people THREE with her fingers) the day after Calvin's birthday. In future years I can see the birthday weekend being a crazy one for the kids since they have them back-to-back. I'll try to make sure Kira makes friends ONLY with other children who have a sibling 2 years younger, haha! :)

Since the weekend was going to be crazy-busy with Calvin's festivities (see my previous post), I decided to host a party during the daytime for Kira's friends who are also children of stay-at-home moms. 7 moms came with their little ones (some with 2 children), so we had a full house! I served up simple fare for lunch (toddler finger-friendly), and the kids had fun playing in the basement playroom, eating lunch (and CAKE!) and finally, a bit of time in our backyard to burn the last bit of energy before passing out in their cars on the way home ("YAY!" say all the mommies). Kira had so much fun, and I was happy that we could spend that special time focused just on her.

Although I didn't serve it until the weekend, I prepared a birthday cake for Kira with her favourite Dora the Explorer. It was my first ever decorated cake, so I'm quite proud of it:


Here are some of the hit toys that Kira received, in case you have a toddler turning 3 and want some good ideas:

• Aquadoodle (a lot of kids get this even from 2, but now that she's really "drawing", she has a greater attention span for this activity).
• play food and a shopping cart (to go with her play kitchen). Pretend-play is starting with a vengeance!
• board games. She now has a bingo game, a Chutes & Ladders, and Candyland.
  
• a "laptop" computer. V-Tech makes a really great laptop that comes complete with mouse that you can control, and 30 learning activities / games. She isn't quite into that yet, but she loves to pretend to "work" when mommy and daddy are on their laptops.
• dolls. Lots of role-playing and pretend play going on. Love it!
• books. Kira has always been a book-lover so we can never go wrong by getting her books. She likes to "read" them to us these days, in "French"! I'll post of video of her "French" one day soon. ;)

Now that the birthdays are over, time to start preparing for Christmas (yikes, did I really just say that?!)