My Baby is Free

Elise turned three yesterday! She still has troubles with her 'th's' so when she says how old she is, it often sounds like "free." We had a relaxing day hanging out with Papa and Curly who are here visiting. I love that they hate to miss a birthday and came down to help celebrate. We started the day with a long walk to go check out Sam's new school. We went to Target and Papa and Curly let the kids each pick out a present. Elise knew exactly what she wanted and picked it out in about 2 seconds. Sam took about 45 minutes to make his final choice. He was overwhelmed with the selection and he has all sorts of internal rules that he likes to follow. Like, he really wanted to get some race cars from the Cars movie, but he wants them all at once, not one at a time. So, he looked at them for a long, long time and could not decide on only one. He was also worried because he already wrote a note to Santa Claus asking for all the race cars that he doesn't have. He thought Santa might get confused if he suddenly had one in his possession that he did not have when he wrote the note. He finally settled on four hot wheels cars and we were off. We enjoyed a late lunch at Pei Wei. We played. We opened a present or two and had ice-cream sundaes for dessert.

Not once, all day, did Elise ask for a gift. She was just so happy to be "free" it never occurred to her that there would be presents to open. She, of course, was happy when we presented the gifts to her but it was not her focus. She was so stinkin' cute all day. With both Sam and Elise, so far my favorite age has been 2 and early 3's. The attitude with Sam didn't surface until almost 4. Hopefully it won't ever surface with Elise but I won't hold my breath. I will just enjoy this age as much as I can because it goes way too fast.

In other exciting news, one of my bestest girlfriends, Jen, gave birth to her third child yesterday. So Lucas, the new baby boy, and Elise will always share the same birthday. I can't tell you how excited I am about that! I can't really tell you why other than it just makes me so happy that out of all the days he could have arrived, he made his appearance three weeks early on Elise's birthday. Somehow that just means the universe knows how close Jen and I are and gave us the same day to celebrate the birth of our children. I love it! Jen has terrible pregnancies so I am also happy that she gets to feel better three weeks early. Congratulations Jen! You are one of the best Mommies I know. I learn a lot from you and I cherish our friendship!! I love you!