Asia's Birthday

Today is Asia's birthday. Yesterday, we had her party since today she has a Girl Scout's roller skating event to go to. Here's a rundown of the girls who came and their birthday presents. Asia loved them all and had a blast. All the girls got along great even though one of them didn't go to the same school (Tori who lives in Wexford - but she went to preschool at Hiland with Acacia, Meena, and Asia).

Joey S - Barbie and swimming pool
Lydia O- stuffed pony with doll
Meena L - Webkinz pony and clothes
Acacia U - Loopers potholder craft kit
Tori S - Make your own Flower vanity
Morgan N - Jewerly and scrapbook craft
Morgan K - Moonsand activity set
Shea S - ToysRUs gift card
Ricki M (babysitter and friend) - Barbie with dogs

Asia had all kinds of ideas for her birthday party. Maybe in October or so, she wanted to have her party at Build-A-Bear. She had 4 friends in mind. Then after Zach's birthday party in November, which was at our house, she wanted her party at our house and to have John plan all kinds of cool games like he did with Zach's party. Then we went to Chuck E Cheese in Texas, and Asia wanted her party there because you get a cool Olympic-looking medal. You get the idea. ChuckECheese, home, Build-a-bear, ChuckECheese,home. This went on for a few weeks, til the day before I sent out invitations. I told her she had to make up her mind because we were going to send out the invitations and if it's not at our house, I would have to make reservations. Luckily she chose home because we can do whatever games and crafts we want, while at ChuckECheese, you can only play their games. I like that idea, though more work for me.
So then Asia had all kinds of ideas on what crafts and games to play. She wanted to play hot potato but with this smiley face hackysack that Zach has. Of course, Zach said she couldn't use it for her party. She was determined that it had to be a small ball with a smiley face. Why? Because the theme of the birthday party was to be smiley faces. Another day, Asia was watching a Strawberry Shortcake DVD, and of course - "Mom, I want a Strawberry Shortcake birthday!" Her idea was to watch the DVD and one of the activities was to play the karoeke game that is included in the DVD. Well, I did get the invite out and promised a fun party and had all the guests dress in their favorite costumes. What were most girls dressed up as? Princesses, of course. I believe we had Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella all present. Snow White's outfit must not be glam enough for these girls. I don't think I ever see a Snow White.
On the day of the party, Zach went to play at his friend Ethan's house. The last thing he wanted to do is be around a bunch of little girls. Meena and Morgan K were the first to arrive. Asia would show them to the dining room table so that they can do a craft that she had planned - making necklaces with Fruit Loops and also making structures out of gumdrops, marshmallows, and toothpicks (thanks to Chelsea F for that idea). Little by little, all the girls trickled in and went straight to the dining room table to work on their crafts. They were so quiet!!! Maybe they're used to being quiet in school when working on crafts. It was hilarious how quiet and well-behaved they were. School trains them well.
Then we made party hats. Asia was determined to use these cardboard stars that I had labored over for her Christmas party and didn't get to use. I had spent nights cutting out cardboard stars that I had covered with recycled wrapping paper from past birthday parties. For the Christmas party, we were going to make wreaths with the cardboard stars and tinsel. Asia and I even made two wreaths to use for templates. So I had this box of cardboard stars that I didn't think would last til next Christmas. Asia and I decided to use them to glue on party hats. Ricki had experience with glue guns, so she got the fun job of gluing on the stars and tinsel to the hats. The girls would put stickers on the hats first and then pick their stars. While Ricki was gluing things to the hats, I had a little makeover area. The girls would pick their own nail polish color from the dazzling array I had. John got roped into doing the temporary tattoos and of course, most girls wanted them on their cheeks! And I had earring stickers for anyone who wanted them. Joey picked the color black for her nails! Hmmm...wonder if that has any indicator of her highschool years. Tori was the only one who wanted a nailcolor that matched her outfit. Again... a sign for future times?
We also played a game I bought that is like pin the tail on the donkey. Since Asia also likes My Little Pony, the game came with a big My Little Pony poster of rainbow dash and you have to put a little rainbow sticker near the pony's rainbow tattoo or whatever you would call it. The first girl to go was Morgan K and she got the rainbow right in the right spot. Well, the girls started to get a little wilder at this point. It was fun to watch. I would blindfold one girl, Asia would start to spin them around and then all the girls would help spin the poor girl and then they'd all start yelling "Stop! Stop! Stop!" and then let the blindfolded girl put the sticker on. At first some of the girls would almost put the sticker on another girl since she'd be surrounded. But eventually, the girls would just turn the one who was blindfolded straight at the poster. The first 5 girls or so all put their marks right on the rainbow spot. We didn't make a big deal of who won and luckily these girls didn't care.
I knew that Asia had a lot of games planned and I also figured the girls would want to do some free play, so I put the birthday party at 3 hours instead of the usual 2. The party started at 2 PM by about 3:30 we were done with all the games! We did pizza and cake and luckily, I had a bingo game that I bought for some birthday past. Sometimes I'm glad I hoard all this old stuff! So we played bingo. Then I used the bingo pictures for a game of pictionary (since the girls can't read yet). John took a couple of group photo's. And at the end of the party, we had happy girls running around the house. Nevertheless, I took a 3 hour nap after the party.

Are Bad Guys Real?

Every now and then, your kids just say something that, while it's so ordinary to an adult, is really profound coming from a child's mouth. Asia and I were talking about bad guys while we were in the car on our way to her Girl Scout's Daisy meeting. It was later at night and maybe because of the darkness, she started asking if bad guys were real. She said she started thinking about them after that one day in the store when she went to the boys' room to change. It took me a few minutes to recall this event, then I realized she was talking about a trip to Kohl's over a year ago when Asia and I had a little argument about trying on some leotards for dance. She wanted to try on one that was too small for her and more expensive then the one I wanted her to try on. So after I told her that she could not try it on and then I went to look through the clearance racks for more clothes for her, she disappeared. I figured she was upset and was sulking over by the toys or something. I walked around a bit and couldn't find her. That's when I started to panic. What seemed like an hour was probably only about 10 minutes, but 10 minutes missing is still frightening. Frightening at least for a paranoid mom. Eventually I found her coming out of the dressing room in the boys area! She decided she was going to try on that leotard all by herself. Earlier in the shopping trip, we had gone into the girls' dressing room to try on some clothes, so she knew that those rooms were used for that purpose. At least, she didn't strip down in the middle of the store to try the leotard on. So on one hand, I was proud of her independence. She had walked all the way to a dressing room area, took off her clothes and put on the leotard, then came back to me with almost all of her clothes in her arms and wearing the leotard. I say almost all of her clothes because she lost her socks at some point. We retraced her steps and checked the dressing room and they weren't there. But anyway, I scolded her that day telling her that she should not walk away like that without telling me because sometimes bad guys like to take little girls away from their mothers. I told her that would make me really sad if someone stole her from me. I guess that made a lasting impression on her because she cried on the way home from Kohl's because she didn't want a bad guy to take her away. And of course, she couldn't sleep that night either. Ugh. It's so hard to know to what degree to tell a child that bad things can happen.

Okay, back to the drive to Daisy's and the present. So my dear daughter asked me if bad guys were really real. I debated this in my head on how to present the subject. I didn't want to lie and say that there is no evil in this world, nor did I want her to be paranoid about every little thing. So I told her that there bad people out there but they usually are in bad areas, not where we live, and come out at night when most people are sleeping. Sure I could have told her that bad people can be anyone and anywhere, but then I'd have a poor little girl who would probably never leave her house or my side again. Anyway, so all this leads up to the clever statement Asia made. She said:

"So bad guys are nocturnal?"

How funny is that! I had to laugh.

"They come out when people are sleeping, Mom. So they're nocturnal."

My soon-to-be 6 year old said that!

Yes, Asia, bad guys are nocturnal. Let's keep it as simple as that.

Nate the Great

We went to a showing of Nate the Great, a musical playing at the Byham Theatre in downtown Pittsburgh. It's always fun to get in some culture and we're lucky to have easy access to downtown to go see shows like this. The last one we went to was the Backyardigans. Maybe even John and I could go see something without the kids! It's surprising that we don't go downtown more often. I think it's the paying for parking. I hate paying for parking! During special events, it's not that expensive, luckily. We almost got into a garage tonight for 5 dollars! The garage filled up with only 2 more cars in front of us. Oh well. There was another garage a block away. It's also exciting to walk down the street when it's filled with people. It doesn't matter that the majority of them were either families going to the Byham or Steeler fans going to tailgate parties before the game. I have been around Heinz Hall on a Saturday with no games going on, and it was pretty busy too. That's always a good sign. You always want a bustling downtown. Otherwise your city may be in trouble.
So back to Nate the Great. I think I may have read some of the series before, but since the title character is a boy, maybe I didn't get past the first book. ha! Anyways, I think now that Zach saw the musical, he may be interested in reading the books too. In this 50-minute musical, Nate has to help his friend Annie find a picture she painted of her dog for her mom's birthday. They eventually figure out that it's her little brother who painted over it. Annie always likes yellow, her brother likes red. There's a painting of an orange dog in Annie's brother's room. I asked Zach - what two colors make orange? Red and yellow!
The clever thing about the musical is most of the supporting actors played multiple roles and were the stage hands to move the scenery around. Two parts of the scenery were these triangular columns that could be rotated to show a different scene - doors fom the street, shelves from Annie's room, etc. Some of the actors played multiple roles. I think Annie's dog was also Annie's brother and her best friend's cat. Then one of Nate's imaginary detective friends was also Annie's best friend, etc. And another neat thing was when they would transition from scene to scene, they would incorporate the actor's into the transition. Like Annie and Nate would be talking while they're rolling a white picket fence out of the scene. Or one of the imaginary detectives was unlocking the wheels for a rolling bed and then would pretend that he forgot that the audience wasn't supposed to see him. I really liked the direction and production of this play. The kids really liked it too. When Annie was singing about what girls could do and said something about boys having short necks, Asia asked me if that was true.
It was just great to get out of the house and go see some more of downtown Pittsburgh.