Birthday Fun!

We've had a great couple of days celebrating Genevieve's third birthday. On Sunday (her actual birthday), we made her favorite breakfast of pancakes and sausage plus we added a little donut and she blew out her first candles. Later on Sunday, we had cake and candles with just our little family and Genevieve opened a couple presents. In the evening, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house where she opened a couple more gifts. Today, we had a family party with her cousin Selene who celebrated her 14th birthday! It's been a great couple days. Genevieve has been very happy and content with her gifts, never asking for more but excited for everything she got. She really loved all the Dora stuff she received and got pretty good at unwrapping gifts by the time her birthday celebrations ended. There were several shrieks of joy and 'I love it's' from her! Her favorite gifts were probably her Dora pajama's, Dora kitchen set and Dora stuffed doll though she also loved her princess tea sets, Dora guitar, Dora backpack, Diego/Jaguar dolls, Dora book and dvd and princess Polly Pockets! Christmas is sure going to be a lot of fun!

Birthday breakfast!

 

Love this one of our four kids! I feel very lucky looking at these kids of ours :)

 Nev had so much playing for hours with her new Dora kitchen!

 

 Birthday Girls! Both born on December 18th, eleven years apart!

Cousins, Athena, Gabrielle and Athena!

Marcus and David (sorry, Dad you were blurry in the picture so I cropped you out!)

More cousins!

Cousin Searra with Robert

Daddy with the birthday girl

 

With Grandma!

Oh the excitement!

With Opa (sorry Kathleen had to crop you out of this one as you were blurry :/....still learning to take these indoor pictures without much light)

A sweet one of the birthday girls

Happy to get Dora pj's!

A lucky mom with her girl!

Some things we want to remember about our three year old sweet Genevieve:

~ Favorite foods: Nev is not a bread girl but a dairy, meet, fruit and sugar lover :). She will often eat the insides of a sandwich and leave most of the bread untouched. She likes broccoli, chicken, chicken nuggets, eggs, steak, oranges, pancakes (with syrup), sausages, fruit snacks, cashew nuts, dried fruit and anything sweet!

~ Learning: Nev is liking books more lately. I try to read to her most days at least for a little bit. She has been able to recite the ABC’s for a long time, knows a couple letters and can count to 20 (not always perfectly however) but doesn’t really recognize numbers yet. Nev does know most of her colors now. She is very verbal and I often hear people say she talks much older than she is. 

~ Genevieve is spunky, confident and opinionated. She loves to be active and run around. She seems pretty fast when she runs, loves to climb and is pretty fearless. She is not afraid to talk to older kids and grown-ups. She has opinions about most things and isn’t afraid to tell us about those opinions :). Luckily, we usually can talk to her and make her understand when she cannot get what she wants or she will just cry for a little bit and get over it when she realizes she will not get her way.

~ Potty training: Nev has been a dream in this category. She was trained in about five days (at 2 years, 9.5 months) and has had only about 3-4 accidents since then. She is very independent just running to the toilet when she has to go, never even telling me or wanting help. She has never had an accident at night and I do not even have to make sure she goes potty before night time. I really wondered if training could ever be this easy (it was NOT with my three older kids) but it is possible...if you are very lucky!

~ Sleeping: Nev’s schedule is quite different than the schedule her older siblings had when they were little! Nev usually goes to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 pm (though there are nights it is later than that when we have activities going on with her siblings). She usually sleeps until 8:00 am on weekdays and 9:00 am on weekends (about half the time she will come into bed with us around 5 am). She usually takes a two hour nap most days though it is always in the car (or at least starts there), often when I pick her siblings up from school. When she doesn’t go in the car, she will not sleep but usually is not really cranky and will go to bed a little earlier that night. Most nights she will go to sleep in her crib without crying; she's gotten a lot better about that the last couple months (before that she would often cry for a couple minutes when we left her after prayers and a song or two).

~ Genevieve continues to have a definite opinion about her clothes. I just make sure I like all the clothes she has and try to influence her choices which works sometimes but not always :) Usually I just go with what she wants but there are times I make her wear what I choose and after a little fussing she's okay with it but I definitely do not fight her with keeping her sweater or shoes on :)

~ Favorite things to do: play with her cousins or siblings, play hide and seek, play tag, play her Dora matching game, play with her dolls and stuffed animals (including stuffed Dora and Mickey/Minnie Mouse), play with Little People and Polly Pockets, watch TV (favorite shows: Dora, Diego, Backyardigans, Jake and The Neverland Pirates). Nev is a very active T.V. watcher, much more than her siblings. She answers the questions the characters on T.V. ask, she jumps around and dances and often plays while she watches...this is a good thing because she does watch more T.V. than I'd like with our schedule!

~ If Chad or I use a stern voice toward Genevieve, she is very quick to ‘crumble’, saying ‘I’m sorry’ very quickly and often, her lip falls immediately and she breaks down into a real cry. She likes to please and loves praise (most of the time and when not tired). She really does not like timeouts and, luckily, we do not have to use them very often (maybe a couple times a month); usually the threat of a timeout is enough :)

~ Nev is very loving, she loves to give kisses and hugs and say ‘I Love You’ (which is really ‘I Lobe You’ as she cannot say her v’s!). She is empathetic and concerned when someone is sad. 

~ I do sometimes worry that Nev doesn’t benefit from a sibling close in age to her making her learn to share more. Her siblings pretty easily give in to her wants and needs which can cause issues sometimes when she doesn’t get her way but she is learning :)

~Nev is very good about saying please and thank you, often without prompting.

~ Nev is just a lot of fun with a great, energetic and charismatic personality; her siblings and mom and dad are pretty enamored with our sweet little girl! We are so glad she made our family complete three years ago!

We Love You So Very Much Sweet Genevieve!