Rainbow Art Party, Part Two

Ten days of sick kid.  On the couch, watching television for hours on end, not eating, seemingly endless fever, up all night coughing, only getting up to take a shower, curling up in a ball in pain sick.  Not pretty.  Today is our first day of attempting to get back to normal life.  Annalise is outside now, getting some sunlight on this beautiful 80 degree day, proving that she is indeed not a vampire.  Alleluia, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  She may actually go back to school next week and perhaps I will leave the house as well.  Needless to say we've had a lot of bonding time.  It hasn't been that bad.  A little forced prison time with a ten year old: you could do a lot worse.  But it has set me back a bit on the whole productivity thing.  We did, however, make a bit of progress on Juliette's birthday party.

Yesterday, we had-delivered her invitations.  It was a good excuse to get Annalise out of the house for a bit!  Here's what they look like:

Just look at that beautiful girl.  I can't believe my baby is going to be four!

For all of the kids' birthday parties, except for Zachary and Annalise's last parties, I've used a picture of the birthday kid doing something related to the party's theme.  This picture was actually taken over the summer, but I thought it was perfect for the occasion.  Recently I discovered that you can download fonts for free on the internet.  Who knew!?  OK, probably most people, but I didn't.  I love finding and downloading new fonts from dafont.  Here's a link to the website:

http://www.dafont.com

It was fun to write it all in rainbow colors, and the envelopes get addressed the same way.  The poem is not my best work, I freely admit that.  Maybe the days on end without sunlight affected my otherwise stellar poetry-writing skills.

Sadly, other than the guest list and date and time, this is as far as we've gotten with our party planning.  Stay tuned!

Zachary's Campout Party

No one ever accused me of being on time.  Ever.  Not my forte.  My poor husband and in laws have had to learn how to deal with my lateness.  It's bad.  So here I am, six months later, posting about Zachary's seventh birthday party.  Which was in July.  At least I'm getting to it, which is more than I can say for anything that happened last year.

Zachary reeeeaaaaallllly wanted a sleepover party, so, since his birthday is in the summer, we decided that a campout would be perfect!  I loved sleeping in the tent in the backyard when I was a kid, and I knew he would too.  It was a super easy party to plan and execute and was inexpensive, too.  And the bonus was that my husband Jason and one of our friends, Bryan, did most of the heavy lifting!  Yes!  Totally my kind of party!

We started off with the invitations.  Every year for birthday party invitations, I've done a picture of the birthday kid doing something related in some way to the theme of the party.  But for this party, Zachary decided he wanted the invitations to look like a tent.  We found some ideas online.  Here is a link to the Pinterest board where we found much of our inspiration:

http://pinterest.com/mellowlane/campout-party/

I'm not sure if you can just click on that to go to the site.  I'm still a computer moron.  Sigh.  It's on my ever-growing list of things to learn/do.

We started out with our wording, and went with green and brown, which seems perfect for a campout.  Unfortunately Zachary is color blind and couldn't really even tell that we had two different colors.  Oh well.  So I decided on the wording and then printed them out in kind of a triangle shape, to show through the tent flap.  I printed two invitations to a page on white card stock and cut them in half.  (But in the getting-it-right phase, I just used regular printer paper.)  Then I rounded them off and cut a brown piece of brown construction paper to match.  Then I attempted to cut and fold back the "flaps" of the "tent."  This took several tries and a lot of experimentation back and forth between the printer and the "tent."  Here is what it looked like:

That's my paper cutter underneath there.  It's been with me since grad school.  We're tight.  And yes, I'm in my pajamas there.  It was probably about two in the afternoon.  Awesome.  That's how I roll when I'm in craft mode.

We also added a packing list, so the kids would know what to bring.

You see that nasty carpet underneath there?  That's gone now.  Yes!!

Another thing I always do is hand write the envelopes in some kind of cute font.  But I just didn't have the energy to copy that cute camp font.  And now that I've figured out how to load free fonts onto word, I decided to let the computer do the work for that, too.  Look at me.  I know you're impressed.

I had originally thought that I would have the boys immediately tie-dye a shirt to wear for the rest of the party, but the practicality of that shot that idea out the window.  So instead, I bought inexpensive backpacks from Oriental Trading and tie-dyed those ahead of time.  This left the dyeing to just our family, which was probably a smart idea.  My kids had fun tying the rubber bands around the backpacks and taking turns dipping them in the dyes.  We chose different shades of brown and green so we had a kind of camouflage effect.  So here's the thing about tie-dyeing.  It says on the directions how long to put the fabric in the dye.  It helps if you actually follow those directions.  Who knew!?  Needless to say we dipped them in for much shorter amounts of time, so our backpacks turned out really light.  I still think they're really cute.  And then I wrote each boy's name in black fabric pen.

At the last minute, because I had time to spare (i.e. I wasn't freaking out about screwing up another cake.  Curse you birthday cakes!!) I decided we needed a pennant sign on the front door.  I printed out the letters in that cute camp font again.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I am a high school geometry tutor, spacial awareness is not something I possess.  Sigh.  There was a lot of cussing going on during this frustrating process.  I decided to bag in completely, when I spotted these:

Old file folders.  I think these might even be from grad school.  I think some of them were reused from my mom and are probably as old as I am.  Put those buggers to good use.  They certainly aren't holding social studies guides anymore!

Cut off the labels and cut them in half.  (There's that carpet again.  In the words of three year old Juliette, "See you later, suckah!")

Much easier to use pencil, a ruler and my BFF paper cutter.  As I was at this time, running out of time, I didn't do a cute font on the pennant, but here's the finished sign on the front door:

You can see it's just twine, and the letters are folded over and taped on the back side.  The sign was ever-so-elegantly taped to the door.  It got the job done.

When the boys arrived, they ran around for a bit.  (Obviously.  They are six and seven year old boys.)  And then they prepared for their hike.  Each boy found their backpack and water bottle, also with their name on it (purchased at the dollar store) and a large Ziploc bag for any treasures they found on their hike.  Then they loaded up a smaller baggie with trail mix from the trail mix bar.

My mother-in-law found these old vintage napkins hiding in a linen closet.  Weren't they perfect for the occasion?

A little twine around a mason jar and it's rugged.

The boys loaded their packs and headed out for a hike with the two dads, one leading (or chasing after the runners) and one bringing up the rear (and nagging/encouraging the stragglers).  Lucky us, we have beautiful horse trails that weave in and out of our whole town.  Zachary and Jason had mapped out their route ahead of time and the boys headed out on about a two or three mile hike.  And I didn't go!!!  I had a break.  In the middle of a birthday party.  Shocking.  I don't even remember what I did during that time.  Probably I cleaned.  So maybe it wasn't that exciting.  The boys came back dirty and thirsty and ready to run around some more.  So they did.  We had no other structured activities, so they played in the "fort" (made up of some old blinds, parts to a composter and anything else the kids can find) up the hill in our backyard, played basketball in the driveway and soccer in the cul de sac.  For dinner, we fed them hotdogs, cooked on skewers borrowed from the Girl Scout troop, over a fire pit, borrowed from my friend Michelle, placed on our driveway with camp chairs surrounding it.

For a cake, we decided not to do a cake.  You can't do a campout without s'mores.  And these boys were spending the night.  I was not about to feed them s'mores and cake.  I'm not totally insane.  So Zachary blew out his flaming marshmallow as his friends sang him happy birthday.

Little shout out to my cousin Katy there, a Wagner lacrosse player!

At this point, about half of the boys went home.  The rest of the boys got in their jammies and got into the tent, armed with flashlights and glowsticks, also purchased at the dollar store.

You like our tent?  It's actually my parents' tent and it's muuuuuuch older than I am!  They bought it right after they got married.  I spent much of my youth in that beauty!

This one is ours, a wedding present, but that night it was for Jason and Bryan to snuggle up in.  Or snore the night away.  The girls and I had our own sleepover in my bed.  I didn't sleep much.  Too many elbows on those little people.

In the morning, we served chocolate chip pancakes and kicked those boys to the curb.  I'm still tired when I think of that day.  After each sleepover, I vow it will be my last.  They are just torture.  But Zachary and his friends loved it!  As I said before, it was a really low maintenance, low budget party, but Zachary said it was his favorite!

Rainbow Art Party, Part One

Tomorrow is re-entry day.  The first day back to school after winter break.  A sad, sad day.  I spent the day on the couch, in my pajamas until 3:00, working on all those things I have been ignoring for way too long.  Girl Scouts.  Pre-school parent board.  Sending emails.  Lots of emails.  Making lists and crossing off very few things.  Inputting all the changes in activities into the calendar (who knew that would take so long!?).  Figuring out how to be in three or four different places at once. The usual.  Part of the day, though, was spent on planning Juliette's fourth birthday party.  I can hardly believe that little person is going to be four.  No time to dwell on that now.  I'll cry at another time when I have more time.  There's no time for crying today.  If I do, I might not stop.  I'll start thinking about everything I've been avoiding and then I'll really start crying.

Many people have asked me about my process for planning a kid's birthday party.  Since I am in the process of planning Juliette's four year old party, I will take you along for the ride...  This party hasn't happened yet; in fact we haven't even set a date, so be prepared for things to change!

Step One: Choose a Theme

For me, choosing a theme is a really important part of planning a party.  This is not so things will be cute, will photograph nicely or so that I can advertise to the world how beautiful everything looked at a one-year-old's birthday party.  (If you know me at all, you know how terrible I am at remembering to take pictures at any event.  And obviously I am terribly inconsistent about blogging.  Oh, and I can barely figure out how to use a computer.)  There are tons of pictures online of beautiful birthday parties for children.  I don't throw those kind of parties.  I'm much more interested in children having a fun, age-appropriate time than having things impeccably beautiful.  Plus, I am on a pretty strict budget.  And these are kids.  I think they are mostly interested in fun.  For me, a theme keeps me organized and gives me direction.  It keeps me on budget as well.

To me, a theme should ALWAYS be about what interests the child, not what's trendy.  This is not a party for me; it's for my child.  My kids are ALWAYS involved in the whole process of party planning, especially in choosing the theme.  Sometimes my kids come up with the ideas themselves.  Sometimes I peruse the internet for ideas and then give them choices, but they are always very much involved in this process.  This is not to say I haven't rejected their ideas.  Barbie has been rejected.  So has ninja.  And Ninjago.  And pretty much anything involving weaponry.  Or other children moving into my house.  Or taking copious amounts of children to Disneyland.

Here are some of the different themes we've used:

Monkeys and Frogs (Annalise's two year old party where she wanted a bounce house)
Water Play (Zachary's two year old party.  In July.  It was hot.  An obvious choice.)
Hearts (Juliette's second birthday, held on Valentine's Day)
Cooking (A's third.  Lots of work.  Both Mom and Mom-in-law vowed to never help with a party again.  I learned to simplify.)
Zachiator Springs (Z's third.  He was obsessed with Cars.  We had bike races in the cul-de-sac.  It was awesome.)
Construction (Z's fourth)
Fancy Nancy (A's fifth.  Paraded in our finery around the cul-de-sac for our brand new neighbors.  One thought I was the Rose Queen - from a distance, but still.  I love her.)
Cheerleading (A's sixth.  The high school cheerleaders did most of the work for me.  Brilliant.)
Pirates (Z's sixth)
Treasure Hunt (A's seventh)
Camp Out (Z's seventh)
Carnival (A's eighth)
Disco (A's tenth)

For Juliette's fourth birthday party, I pinned a bunch of ideas on a general "Party" board on Pinterest and then let her decide.  Since she is obsessed with artwork right now, an art theme became the obvious choice.  And I think she loved the visual of the rainbows.  So a rainbow art theme it became.  Note!  I saw the rainbow theme first, which I thought was beautiful, but what does one do with a rainbow theme????  I didn't really have any ideas for activities.  A theme does not help me unless it gives me ideas for what the kids should do.  If things look good but there's nothing to do, my house just gets destroyed.  And that's not fun.  Well maybe for the kids, but not for me.  When I saw art-themed parties, I thought it would be great to combine the two ideas.

Step Two: Gather Ideas (The More the Better!)

Once we decided on the theme, I started pinning away.  Here is a link to the Pinterest board I created:

http://pinterest.com/mellowlane/rainbow-art/

If you click on this link, you will see a lot of beautiful parties and other rainbow ideas.  I have learned that my execution is rarely as beautiful as things are supposed to be.  For example, there are some beautiful layered cakes on there.  This would inevitably take me three times as long as it should to execute and will look much uglier than in should.  I know my limitations.  I will not attempt that cake!! If I were, I would assign it to someone else, like my unsuspecting sisters-in-law who were "asked" to make a pirate's chest cake.  Also, the key to that cake is the slicing and I do not want a bunch of three and four year olds at my house who have had a slice of a six layered cake.  With frosting.  Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.  Also, with a rainbow theme, there is a lot of food coloring involved inevitably.  I could make my own dyes from beet juice and cherries, but I'm not that good.  There will be food coloring in the cupcakes and maybe a drizzle on the popcorn if I do that.  There will not be a candy bar with beautiful apothecary jars filled with multi-colored candies.  Uh uh.  Not going to happen.  Looks beautiful.  Takes lovely pictures, but, uh, no.  Cupcakes are plenty.

Before Pinterest, I got a lot of ideas from this website:

http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com

It has a ton of themes and different real parties with invitation ideas, decorations, favors, activities, etc.  I still use it, especially for activity ideas.
I write down (or pin!  God bless Pinterest.) every good idea I see; way more than I will ever use.  Better to have lots of ideas and have to narrow down than try to come up with ideas at the last minute.

This is my jumping off point.  I usually do this much well in advance and then sit on the ideas for a while.  I'm a sloooooooow thinker.  I like to let ideas marinate for a while before I make decisions.  Also, I almost never come up with my own clever ideas.  I copy, copy, copy!  Shamelessly!  I use and abuse other people's ideas all the time.  And I'm so not embarrassed to admit it.  I take other people's brilliant, clever, creative ideas and make them my own.

Step Three: Make Lists

Making a list of food, activities, favors, etc. will help you focus on what you want to do at the party.  It will help you see where you have holes and where you need to narrow down.  Here is my list, so far, for Juliette's party:

Juliette’s Rainbow Party

Food Ideas

            Rainbow Cupcakes

            Rainbow of Fruit

            Rainbow of Raw Veggies in Ranch Dressing Cups

            Rainbow Popcorn

            Cloud Shaped Mini Sandwiches

Activity Ideas

            Paint Canvas for Juliette’s Room

                        http://www.wholesaleartsframes.com/categories/Artist-Canvas/Canvas-Panels/

            Paint Individual Canvases

                        http://www.wholesaleartsframes.com/categories/Artist-Canvas/Stretched-Canvas/3%7B47%7D4%22-Deep/

Sand and Chalk in Jars

            Beaded Bracelets

            Homemade Play Dough Table

            Chalk on the Driveway

            Macaroni Rainbow Art

            Jar Lid Ribbon/Button Streamers

            Decorated T-Shirts

Decoration Ideas

            Rainbow of Balloons

            Tied Fabric Rainbow Wreath

            Fabric Bunting

            Rainbow of flowers

            Rainbow Streamers

            Homemade Confetti Tablecloth

Favor Ideas and Take-Aways

            Apron

            Melted-down Crayon Shapes

            Sidewalk Chalk

            Box of Crayons

            Individual Canvases

            Bracelets

            Rainbow Book

            Homemade Play Dough, Rolling Pin and Cookie Cutter

            Sand/Chalk in Jar

Obviously this is way more ideas than I plan to do and maybe some brilliant idea will come to me in the meantime and I will do that instead.  But you get the idea.  Also, I'm really a pencil and paper kind of girl.  I'd much rather use a notebook than a computer.  However, I've learned that if I type things up, I can easily add a website right into my notes, click on it and there it is.  I will probably eventually add a lot of links to this list to make my life easier when it comes to copying other people's brilliantocity or ordering supplies online.

I think that's enough information to get you started.  Next I need to decide on a date and time, a guest list and invitations.  I'll let you know if I get that far!

Mason Jar Love

I love me a Mason Jar.  I use them for everything... holding food like trail mix, nuts, chocolate chips, popcorn; pens and pencils; poker chips for awards; coins; toothbrushes, etc.  They are so functional, but they're also beautiful!

Clearly I need more popcorn.

This jar was left over from the French themed bridal shower we threw for my sister-in-law.  Why my kids have seven toothbrushes apiece I'll never understand.  This is only some of the toothbrushes in their bathroom.  And apparently Juliette doesn't discriminate.  She just grabs a toothbrush at random and brushes away.  Awesome.

I have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen, meaning I mostly hate to love it.  But a kitchen redo is not going to happen any time soon, so I've decided I need to embrace my country kitchen and make the most of it.  So I started searching at the flea market for old milk jars to use as vases and found that they were $12 a piece!  There was no way I was going to spend that kind of money, when lightbulb!  (Cue Steve Carell in Despicable Me.)  I could use my mason jars!  Here is my first attempt:

Isn't that pretty?  These are just roses from my garden.

At Valentine's Day I kicked it up a notch:

Aren't those pretty?  They are just Trader Joe's tulips and ribbons corresponding to the holiday.  I switch them out for the season.  And of course I've saved them to use them year after year.

The friend, Sarah's mom, Laurie, is an avid antique collector.  She has incredible taste and even does some restoring of her own.  I occasionally benefit from this.  Look what appeared on my doorstep last week:

Isn't she pretty!?

French Themed Bridal Shower

On Saturday we celebrated the wedding of my younger brother, David, to his longtime girlfriend, Diana.  It was a beautiful ceremony, filled with Diana's homemade touches and both D and D's personalities.  My older brother, Bill, officiated and the ceremony was personal, touching and funny.  What a special day!  More on that later...

In the spring, Diana's bridesmaids and I threw a vintage Parisian themed bridal shower for her.  We went back and forth on the theme, but since D and D got engaged in Paris, we decided on that for our theme.  Here is a link to our Pinterest page, which provided our inspiration:

http://pinterest.com/mellowlane/d-s-shower/

We started by deciding on our invitations.  We found these hot air balloon invitations on Etsy and fell in love with them.  We debated about having them be a bit more Parisian, but we loved the hot air balloon and decided it was travel-inspired and fit our theme well enough.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/84853996/vintage-feel-hot-air-balloon-bridal?ref=sr_gallery_17&ga_search_query=invitations+love+is+in+the+air&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade

Kelly, the owner of the Etsy shop worked with us to create the format and wording we wanted and then emailed us the JPEG to print out ourselves.  It seemed a little flimsy, so we mounted them on two colors of paper.  Here is what we ended up with:

Sorry for the weird crop.  Didn't want my mom's address out there.  And now can we all just take a moment there and acknowledge the fact that I just uploaded a picture to my blog!!  Yea me!!!  My heart is still doing palpitations.  That was pretty exciting.  I feel like I've actually accomplished something today.  Wow.

The girls and I were on a pretty tight budget, so we tried to go as inexpensive as possible.  We had the party at two in the afternoon, so we did not serve a full lunch.  We did French munchies and desserts.  We did three French cheeses, purchased at Trader Joe's, fruit and two different crepes.

Dude!  Two pictures!  I'm blowing my own mind right now.  Our big food splurge was on French pastries.

I borrowed these cake stands from my friend Michelle.  She usually weaves a ribbon through the holes, but she suggested twine to go with our vintagey kind of feel.  It was perfect since I was using twine around the flower "vases."  (I'll show those in a minute.)

We also had a yummy mimosa bar, which was super fun!  I went to three different stores to find bottles to hold juice.  (I should also mention that I purchased bottles from all three stores, only to return the ones I didn't want.  It became an obsession.  It's not good.  I got these from Ross.  They have similar ones at Ikea, but they are more expensive.)

In looking at Pinterest, we found the idea of a "make your own perfume bar."  We loved this idea, thought it would work for different ages, and would be both an activity and a favor.  There are lots of different options out there, in different price ranges.

We used inexpensive maps from AAA as a tablecloth in case there were any spills.  And this table was a high, cocktail table, so people could stand to make their own perfumes.  Each guest had a bag stamped with an Eiffel Tower and "merci" and a tag with their name, also stamped with a French stamp.

For decorations, I sent out an email to a bunch of my friends and they brought over anything Parisian that they had laying around the house.  We used them all over.  Here's the backdrop to our food table.  (The food table, by the way, is my mom's ping pong table, with half left folded up.  It makes for an awesome buffet table.

My parent's neighbor flies the French flag every year on Bastille Day, so we happily snatched that up.

We also printed out a bunch of engagement photos of D and D as well as pictures that Diana took on their trip to Paris.  We hung them up using twine and clothespins.  (Actually my dad pinned them up.  Yea Dad!)

Most of our decoration budget and time was spent on flowers.  We went to the Los Angeles flower mart the day before to buy flowers.  I already had these metal containers, which I've used as planters.  Some things I replanted.  Some of the containers were already empty.  Upon emptying them out, I discovered that we had drilled holes in the bottoms to let water flow out, which of course is so not convenient for cut flowers.  We ended up putting different sized Tupperware containers in the bottom of the containers to hold the water.  The idea was that this would look like a French flower market.  We were pretty happy with the results, and buying larger, less expensive flowers in bunches saved us a lot of money.

We also needed flowers for the tables.  I found a whole bunch of vintage French labels from The Graphics Fairy and they inspired the table arrangements.  Here's a link to one of those, but there are tons of others, too.

http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/2011/05/vintage-graphic-image-round-french-soap.html

I took my empty jars, in different sizes, which I use all the time for holding nuts, trail mix, raisins, chocolate chips, etc.  I had already removed their original labels.  (Sometimes it takes a little nail polish remover or rubbing alcohol to get all the glue off.)  Then I printed the labels in different sizes for the different jars.  I attached them with homemade Mod Podge.  I found the recipe for that here:

http://doityourselfdivas.blogspot.com/2011/09/diy-mod-podge.html

Then we tied each one with twine and filled them with flowers.  We placed three at each table in varying heights.  I think they looked gorgeous and were a huge hit.  AND, other than the flowers, they were practically free.  I had all the materials already.

We also used one type of flower per jar.  Flower arranging is not my strength and I find that grouping flowers by type eliminates some of that problem.

It was a great day, filled with yummy treats, beautiful flowers, old and new friends and, most importantly, a lot of love for Diana.

Going to hit publish now.  Cross your fingers that this actually works.  If not, my computer may get thrown across the room.

Gonna Amp Things Up

I've been a terrible blogger lately.  Always.  I'm pretty much a terrible blogger.  But since I've started on Pinterest (my newest obsession), I've gotten the chance to see some incredible blogs.  It's amazing and inspiring what women around the country are doing.  I've learned so much from these women I don't know.  I've learned about cooking, party planning, organization, saving pennies, sewing, the list goes on and on.  Sure makes me wish I had the time to learn how to sew.  It's on the list... (that is the ever-growing list of things I want and/or need to do).

So I've decided I'm going to attempt to do more with this blog.  I'm going to figure out how to add pictures.  OK first I'm going to figure out how to take pictures from my camera and put them on the computer.  Maybe I'll give myself a title page that looks awesome.  Of course I have no idea how to do any of this, and I'm a very slow learner when it comes to all things technical.  But if I can learn how to text and use excel then there's hope!  Now I just need a teenager to teach me how to use a computer.  Ally!!!  Where are you?!

Becoming a Big Girl

Have you ever met a toddler that does not insist that they are "a big girl" or "a big boy"?  Our favorite quote of Zachary's is, "Zachy no baby.  Zachy big boy."  He was almost two.  The "big girl" in our house is now narrowing in on three.  In so many ways, she is becoming a big girl.  She can dress herself -- down to the shoes and all; she can ride a tricycle; she can even unload the dishwasher.  She also could tell me the second she pooped or peed.  (Do you get where I'm going with this?)  And then she would immediately insist on a new diaper.  And if a new diaper was not forthcoming, the whole neighborhood heard about it.  It was time.  I knew it.  She knew it.  The neighbors knew it.  It was time to potty train.

Let me give you a little back story as to how I feel about potty training.  Annalise was the easiest child on earth to potty train.  I swear I remember it taking about a day; maybe a bit longer for the pooping.  And she hardly ever had an accident.  It was easy.  Piece of cake.  But she was the easiest toddler ever.  And what does God give you when you've had an easy toddler?  Zachary.  Zachary was not the easiest toddler on earth.  And I'm convinced he was the hardest child ever to potty train.  In fact I am scarred for life.  In my opinion potty training is the worst task a parent has to strike off their list.  (But I have yet to have teenagers, so stay tuned for that opinion to change.)

But it was time.  And I had the time.  The big kids had a whole week off from school for Thanksgiving.  The next break they would have is at Christmastime, and that wouldn't work if we also had to fit in a very loooooong drive to Arizona to see the in laws.  And frankly I was tired of the diapers... Tired of changing them; tired of paying for them; tired of being yelled at because of them.  So Thanksgiving it was.  We gave Juliette all sorts of warnings that it was coming.  She seemed excited, expecially since we attached potty training to a new "big girl" room.  (We're still not sure what that means yet!)  So Thanksgiving vacation came and we stocked up on stickers, a poster for her door reading "Juliette is using her potty!" (which was, of course, a total lie for quite a few days), M&Ms and Dollar Store prizes.  Oh and potties.  All sorts and varieties of potties.  We were ready!

Unfortunately the pee was not so ready.  We quickly learned that Juliette has a bladder like Jason's in that it can hold a whole gallon of pee.  We would go hours of sitting and trying, eating M&Ms and nothing.  And then an accident on the kitchen chair or on the dining room floor.  After three days I was ready to throw in the towel.  And then a little success on day four and then regression again.  I was ready to hang myself.   Finally after a week, we had a break through.

It was Saturday morning.  The kids were due to go back to school on Monday and I was so frustrated and torn.  I didn't know what to do.  Once the kids were back in school, we would be back to carpools and soccer practice, dance class and running all over town.  We would not have a bathroom at our beck and call.  Juliette was particularly clingy that morning.  She wanted to watch a movie.  (The answer to this was yes, as the potty training kid gets to do a whole lot of whatever they want during potty training in the Evans house.)  And she wanted to cuddle.  You should also know that Juliette is my least cuddliest kid.  This is through some cruel trick of nature.  The mommy who wants to cling on to her last baby needs a baby who likes to cuddle!!  It's a total bummer.  But on this day she did want to cuddle.  And that child laid on my chest for an entire movie!  She cuddled and buried her head in my shoulder and did all those cute things that babies are supposed to do.  And we talked.  We talked about how she is a big girl now, but she will always be my baby.  It was an honest conversation with no alterior motive.  But somehow it was just what Juliette needed.

That afternoon, Juliette was potty trained.  She still has accidents on occasion, but I can firmly say that she is potty trained.  It's like a miracle to me!

So even my girl who is so insistent that she is a BIG girl and NOT a baby needed to be babied a bit.  Potty training has to be one of the great stresses of babyhood, behind weaning and learning to sleep by oneself.  My big girl just needed some reassurance that she is still my baby.  I have tried to reassure her that even when she has babies of her own that she will always be my baby.  I am grateful to be able to cross potty training off my list.  And I am grateful, too, that now when Juliette needs to be babied a bit, she will not scream for her diaper to be changed.  She will ask for a cuddle.  That's the best kind of babying there is.