Thursday, March 13, 2014

Sylvia's 2nd Birthday!!

With our new baby's pending arrival, I wanted to get a good head-start on birthday cakes for this month. On Friday, the last day of February, the girls and I mixed up and baked their birthday cakes.

For Sylvia's birthday cake, I wanted to do something a little different (not the same as Susannah's - post coming soon, is the plan) so we wouldn't get burnt out with two birthday cakes so close together. I chose to make her cake a spice cake, and decorated it with regular buttercream frosting.

Sylvia was the main helper/observer when we were mixing up her cake.

And she got to lick the beater. :)

Since she's not quite old enough to communicate how she wanted her cake decorated, I had been thinking about it for a couple of months. I kept drawing a blank, though. Her two favorite critters that she sleeps with are a stuffed cat and a stuffed duck and that was a close as I could get to an idea of some sort. Even the day before we started the cakes I was still wondering how I was going to decorate it. Then I had a light-bulb moment! She currently loves the Gossie & Gertie board books that we have. I knew that a Gossie & Gertie cake would be perfect for her.


Friday night after the girls went to bed I mixed up the frosting so I could get right to work on the decorating as I had the opportunities on Saturday (Daniel was going to be gone much of the day). Saturday before lunch I worked at getting the patterns drawn, increased in size (thank you, printer, for having an enlarge feature!) and cut out. Then the girls watched as I mixed up the different colors for their cakes. That was a bit of a brain stretch for me as they wanted to help and touch and sniff and look REALLY closely. :) 

I decorated the cakes over naptime and Sylvia was very, very happy with her cake when she woke up. :)  After the girls went to bed that night I wrapped the cakes up and we put them in the deep freezer to wait for the birthday celebrations.

Sylvia's actual birthday (March 5th) was on a Wednesday. Since we have church Wednesday nights and we knew it wouldn't make a difference to her at her young age, we celebrated her birthday Tuesday evening.

Daniel's parents came over and joined us for her birthday dinner. She is a big fan of anything noodles, so I made a 9x13 dish of Spaghetti Pie. I also had a tossed salad and a (store-bought, brown & serve) loaf of french bread. It was a yummy meal!

She loved her birthday cake and did a great job blowing out her candles after we sang to her. :) Funny enough, as soon as we put the cake - with the candles lit - in front of her, she blew them out before we could start singing. So we laughed, re-lit the candles and told her to wait until we sang. She loved it!! 


Waiting for supper to begin. 
Opening her gift from Grandma and Papa - bath toys!!!

 


(Secret: I couldn't think of a single thing to get her. I thought and thought and though and thought. We have PLENTY of toys, puzzles and books. She could use some new tights and clothes but shopping for any of those was about the last thing I wanted to do plus with my weekly Dr. appointments for the Baby I didn't want to spend any more time in town. We didn't officially give her a gift. I am having a friend put several childrens records onto CDs, so they will be her "gift" once we get those back. :) )

Reading the Gossie & Gertie book that I based her cake picture from.
















And that is how we celebrated Sylvia turning 2 years old!! We are so thankful that God gave her to us to love and care for.

A few things about Sylvia:
She still sucks the two middle fingers of her right hand, and holds her blankie with her left hand.

She went from calling her blankie "bah-hee" to "bah-wee-see" and just recently started calling it "blankie".

She pronounces Susannah's name correctly now. It started off as 'hannah, then it was SUE-sannah, and now it's Susannah. :-)

She is very much an imitator! Monkey see, monkey do, not matter what it is. She also likes to do thins by herself. Often she will tell us "I do it". Most of the time it is for things she really can't quite do yet, like getting dressed or putting her socks on.

She has a very independent spirit but a very sensitive heart. Oh my, it doesn't take much to discipline her. One "look" from her Daddy and sometimes that is all that is needed!

She loves to snuggle. She is very good at puzzles. She just started singing a few weeks ago and sings bits and pieces of many songs.

She likes to take BIG bites of food and we have to frequently remind her to take little bites. Another mealtime frequency is knocking one of her utensils onto the floor. Almost EVERY suppertime, at some point we hear the clang of her spoon or fork hitting the floor.

She loves noodles (any pasta, fixed any way), scrambled eggs, almost any fruit, and especially DESSERT. She just started pronouncing it "dessert," too. It was "deh-wit" for a long time and it took us a long time to figure out that she was asking for dessert! :)

She likes to go potty but isn't ready to potty train yet (and neither is this mama ready to tackle that!). Some days she asks to go more and some days she doesn't use the potty once.

She is growing like a weed lately. She has pretty much outgrown all of the shirts she started out the winter wearing. I am still squeezing her into them, though, because Susannah is wearing the next size up! I have had to shift a few of Susannah's shirts down to Sylvia, though. I know brand and style has some to do with it, but overall 2T and 3T shirts are too small for her. I think she is going to take after the taller people in our families (there are very tall people on both sides).

She loves to swing. With the few spring-like days we've had lately, she has really enjoyed being outside and swinging. She will just sit there and be pushed for a very long time. She gets that from her mama. :)

She loves her big sister but also knows how to push her buttons. I have to frequently remind her to ask, not just take; use kind words; and so on.

And that's a little bit of what all is going on with Sylvia lately! 

2 comments:

Amanda said... [Reply to comment]

I agree that it is hard to pick gifts for the kids. Especially when they already have so much! The cake is beautiful, you are so talented!

Georgi said... [Reply to comment]

Sylvia is a darling little girl, now that she is getting older she is developing her own look.