Happy birthday, Emily!!

Emily is officially 3 and she is so excited about it! We had a small celebration with Grandma and Grandpa C. over Memorial Day weekend. Emily was so happy to have cake and to get presents.

She carefully licked the frosting off of her cupcake, insisting that despite how it looked, she really was eating the cake, too! She chose a Dora theme this year. She is very into Dora these days. She has started acting out the themes from the Dora book by insisting that she will make us a map every time we need to go somewhere. Then she'll tell us, "See you go over the mountain, and through the spooky tree, and that's how we'll get to Target!" She is very serious about it and brings the map in the car and everything.

Her mind continues to be very active and imaginative. She will often sit and play by herself, talking quietly the whole time. If you are able to hear what she is saying, or if she is willing to tell you what she is working on, it is usually some game that involves either some imaginary friends who always have goofy names that rhyme, like "Mauper" and "Lauper", or she is imagining that she is playing with kids from her class at school, like Jack and Gavin, who are twin boys.

Her imagination has also started to affect our bedtime/naptime routine lately. Before I leave her room, she always asks me to check under her bed for monsters. Once I give it the all clear, then she asks me to check the closet for monsters. Once the closet gets the all clear, then she will declare, "Ok, so I'm safe!" Only then can she concentrate on going to sleep. Of course, Abbie, being so incredibly helpful, started to tell Emily the other day that the monsters are only visible after I leave the room. I quickly changed the subject before Emily had time to process that one!

Emily's school year is over for the summer, but there were lots of good events during May. Close to Mother's Day, they had a tea party for all the moms. It was very cute! They had all practiced with using their manners and offering their mom a cup of tea, and Emily was so excited to have me in her class.

They also had an end of year party which was basically just a big sing-along. It was cute, but there were a lot of songs and I think both the parents and the kids started to fatigue after awhile. One of the cuter things that they did, though, was to let the kids act out Little Miss Muffet. They all took turns with one kid being Miss Muffet and another kid putting the spider on the tuffet. Then, at the appropriate time, the kid playing Miss Muffet would jump up, pretending to be afraid of the spider. I was so busy trying to get a picture of Emily in her wig and sitting on her tuffet that I only caught the tail end of the rhyme on video, but it is still pretty cute.