It's Her Party and She'll Cry if She Wants To

It's official--Bailey is 3!!  I can't believe it!  I am the mom of a three-year-old; that thought kind of blows my mind and makes me sad all at the same time.  Her birthday was on Saturday, February 19, so it was a perfect day for her party...at least that's what we thought. 

She woke up in the morning and we had a mini celebration before the big party.  I put Grandma Mosher's present in her bedroom the night before, so she woke up saying, "Mommy, what's that?  Who's that for?"  It's so fun to surprise kids.

We got her these cool wooden cupcakes that you can decorate with a dry erase marker.  We sang Happy Birthday, she blew out the candles, and then quickly got to work decorating her cupcakes.

She has known the date of her birthday for quite some time and we'd been talking about her party for a while too.  All she cared about was that her cousins and Hailey were there, she would have cupcakes, and make a craft.  We had planned on having Brian bring a jumpy from his work, but the disastrous weather (that never really was) cancelled that nice and easy plan.  The party was going to start around 2:00ish.  The plan was to eat yummy BBQ, make a craft, open presents, decorate cupcakes, eat cake, and I even had an additional craft for an art show that Bailey wanted last minute if the kids were up for it.

Around 2:45ish everyone was there so I started to gather the kids around the table for craft time.  We were going to make bead bracelets and necklaces.  I was telling all the kids to sit down so I could show them what they were going to do when, BAM--a 5 second disaster struck!  Kate went to sit on the table and it must have been off-balanced because the glass table top popped up and then somehow landed on Bailey's right pointer finger and crushed it.  It happened so quickly, I wasn't really quite sure what had happened.  I was Bailey was crying so I went over to her and immediately saw her huge finger.  By the look of it--huge, purple, and crooked--I thought for sure it was broken.  Kids fingers are so tiny I don't imagine that it takes much to break one.  I brought her into the kitchen and just let the grandmas take over.  I was really bummed because we hadn't started anything at all and we were already off to a rough start.

Here's the sad birthday girl moments after the finger injury.

It took all of us to try to distract her from hef finger and have some fun.  This is our sad attempt to get her to make a necklace.

The other kids had tons of fun making the craft :)

Cute Owen loved it!

From crafts, we quickly moved onto presents--you can see how well that went!  Bailey was just a bit dramatic about all of it.

I told Ty that I'd pay him $5 if he got her to smile.  My dad jumped in and put a box on his head to make her laugh.  I love my family!

She was kind of like a crazy kid going from happyish to sad in the blink of an eye.

Here's her sad swollen finger.

This was her face for most of the day.

I got the rest of the kids doing the craft because someone might as well enjoy it.  Eventually we coaxed Bailey into the room with a bag of ice on her hand and her paci in her mouth!  So please don't think that she walks around with her paci all day and she's three!!  We were looking for anything to get her to calm down and the paci kind of did it.  (side note: for the next week she requested her paci all the time like when she was a little baby; it was a rough week because she didn't understand it was for emergency use only)  So the rest of the party, Bailey was one-handed.  She held that little hand curled up against her chest, but still attempted to do everything.  There are some seriously sad pictures from the party, but she did have fun.

Because of the accident, the party schedule was thrown way off.  The goal now was to do whatever would get Bailey to stop crying.  We did beads for a while, but that didn't work well.  We quickly tried presents to distract her.  That worked, but again only temporarily.  The one thing that definitely did the trick was decorating the cupcakes.  That should have been my first guess with Bailey because she is so driven by sugar.  After cake we sat around and talked and let the kids play. 

Here's a smile while decorating/eating cupcakes.

I think this was everyone's favorite part

Here's Kate's funny face--she does make the best faces.

Here's Owen and his meticulously decorated cupcake.

Another one of our as good as it gets family photos.  At least we tried.

Now we're having fun!

Caught in action trying to blow out her candles.  Being the nice mom that I am, I bought the candles that are supposed to light back up after you blow them out.  They didn't quite work as quickly as I wanted them to; maybe that's why they were on clearance.

Trying to get a picture of the four of them was hilarious!  None of them wanted to pay attention or smile.  Owen had to be forced by Kyle to sit there nicely, so he was sad.  Kate is posing, and Hailey was into something else that caught her attention.  This was the only one with Bailey smiling, so it was the winner.

Uncle Ty Ty and Aunt Toni got Bailey this awesome art center.

Brian and I had decided to hold off on the ER until the next day because we didn't feel like hanging out in the ER for hours on end--I know we are great parents!  Instead, we made a lovely homemade splint out of a popsicle stick and athletic tape.  When we did take her in the next morning, the nurse commented on what a great job we did with the homemade splint and I'm pretty sure he was serious.  There ended up being no broken bones, thank goodness, but she did get to wear an awesome splint for the whole week.  Bailey's favorite part was that she got about 10 stickers while at the doctor's office.

Here she is with her awesome pirate hook splint.

It ended up being a very dramatic entrance to the threes, but I hope it's not a sign of what the year ahead will be like.  Bailey had fun, there was yummy food, and we were surrounded by family and friends--that's what I shall choose to remember :)

Here's what Bailey got for her birthday (I'm only listing it so I can remember what to get a three-year-old next time I have one):
Big kid games (Candyland and Cooties) and princess blanket from Grammy &Papa
Beauty & the Beast dolls from cousins
Cute outfit from Aunt Harriet and Uncle Fred
Adorable dress, coloring book, and sticker book from G&G Mosher
Shopping cart filled with goodies from Hailey
A dress, wooden puzzle, and Oh La La dolls from Grandma & Grandpa Dan
Cupcakes, puzzles, tea party set, and dress up dolls from me & Brian
Art center from Ty & Toni
Way more than any one little girl needs--thanks to everyone!!

Happy Birthday to my big girl Bailey!  We love you so much and are amazed everyday at what you know and learn.  You bring so much joy to our family.  And I know you're going to be a great big sister!