As you might recall from yesterday, Amanda and I let Milly go to sleep later than usual last night, figuring it would help her sleep in this morning, thereby delaying her required nap time enough that she’d be in a good mood for her party. We heard her awake in her room, first playing with Violet (a stuffed animal that makes music and such) then running around in her room about about 7:30. Yeah, she usually gets up at 8:00 and I was hoping she’d stay down until at least 9:00, which she’ll sometimes do when we let her sleep in. Nope.
The good news is that she was good all day anyway.
Amanda was up at 7:00 and I was out of bed within 15 minutes after that and we spent the morning prepping for the party- setting up a canopy, icing cupcakes, picking up balloons, setting up decorations, that sort of thing. Milly was very excited to see everything that was set up when we finally got her out of her room, but I think she loved the balloons most of all. She had been watching Up with my mom (my parents had picked it up for her this morning when they went to get a few things, though it seems to have one spot where it’s defective so we’ll need to exchange it) when I walked in with a dozen balloons, one pink and the rest purple. Milly kept shaking them and bringing them down around our heads, looking through them and saying, “I see you!” One of them, the single pink balloon, popped on our ceiling. We also set up Ladder Ball and Cornhole, which ended up keeping a lot of people occupied.
Noah Andrews, David and Jamie’s older kid (he’s either three or four- I can’t remember) called and sang Happy Birthday to Milly over the phone. It went like this:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
(repeat a few times)
It was so stinking cute.
We had a good turnout at the party. Milly wore the little skirt thing My parents, Erin and Britt, Amanda’s immediate family plus Jenn, her grandparents, the whole Frazelle crew plus Christian, the Hauensteins, the Clarks, the Warkentiens minus Amy (working), the Kays minus Mia (also working) the Ayars minus Paul (golfing), Cyra, the Cains, Bonnie stopped by for a bit. I think that’s everyone, and I apologize if I left anyone out. I think we had close to 40 guests in all.
Anyway, we had a great time, everyone told us the decorations looked great and having everyone create their own pizzas, an idea inspired by the Hauensteins, went well.
When it came time for Milly to open presents, she got a little overwhelmed. Everything she opened, she wanted to play with right then and there and didn’t care about the rest of the presents until we would shove another wrapped box at her. She got a lot of stuff: bubble wands, Woody and Rex dolls, Cars, a large stuffed Lightning McQueen, a tent, a ball you hook up to a water hose, two back packs, a dress-up dress, a homemade dress by Jenn, tickets to see a Yo Gabba Gabba show and meet the characters (um… wow!), a gift certificate to The Fuzzy Peach, some money, books, stickers, coloring books… all kinds of things. I know I’m not listing everything.
The party was winding down around that time. The kids who were left played with toys inside for a bit while the adults congregated in the kitchen and outside under the canopy. Eventually the crowd dwindled down to grandparents and great-grandparents and Milly was ready for a nap. She made it to some time after 3:00, which really impressed me.
Not long after Milly went down, only my parents were left. We talked for a bit then my mom asked if we could finish watching Up. She really liked Dug. They took off not too long after we finished the movie. They, like me and Amanda, were pretty tired and worn out.
Most everything had already been cleaned, but we picked up a little more. I considered taking a nap and went to the guest room, but Milly was awake and downstairs before I could fall asleep, so I figured I’d stay up. We watched Cars, but Milly’s attention was in and out of it. By the time we finished, it was past her bedtime so we put her down and Amanda and I watched some more Arrested Development.
Zach Dotsey