Rain, Halloween & Emotional Mommies

It is a strange feeling when your first baby goes to a legitimate kids birthday party and plays and enjoys herself. For the past couple years we've done baby birthday parties, the kind where everyone sits around admiring the mute children who can barely toddle while holding onto furniture. My baby grew up right under my eyes and then received an invitation to Maddie's 5th birthday party at Party Central, which is an awesome place full of bounce houses, huge blow-up slides, obstacle courses, and lots of ball pits! Believe me, it's just as much fun for the parents (unless you're pregnant and get stuck in the obstacle course, not that that happened....)
Caelen loved this slide area. It started with climbing up on these little bugs.

Then sliding down the slide.
And into the pretty deep ball pit below. She did this for 45 of the 60 minutes we were there.

She's not in distress here, I assure you! That's her funny smile for the camera! And this is also where a pregnant woman might get stuck.....
And here's my girl eating birthday cake with all the other kids. Brings a tear to mommy's eye!
Who knew a simple birthday party would get me all emo about my baby growing up? Well I guess I should remember I AM pregnant and that brings with it a whole bunch of emotional issues. I think I need a little baby to hold again!! One that doesn't run away saying, "No kisses Mommy!" LOL

So then Halloween rolls around whether you're ready or not. We fell into the "Not" category. Caelen can say, "Trick or Treat" but I know she would have been too young this year. She would have got to some stranger's door and freaked out. She hates introductions to new people and let's face it, to a 2 year old, Halloween is just a whole bunch of introductions to your neighbors that you don't even care about!

But the morning of came and I thought, "Hmm... I wonder if there's anything we can do to make this day seem like not just another day." I happened to find one more costume in her box of hand-me-downs and it fit! So I asked if she was interested and she was, so she got to be a cheetah all day. She was very excited about her costume, especially the tail! (Ignore the expression in this picture, sometimes she takes the picture-taking-business very seriously.)

So lots of people got to see her dressed for the holiday even though we didn't go out.

Last time it rained, Caelen wasn't old enough to care about playing outside let alone understand what rain was. So I considered this storm her first rain. She has been enjoying it immensely; talking non stop about how it's raining and that made Grandma and Grandpa have to go in the house. She talks about her favorite cartoon Oswald because he's had a few rainy day episodes and so even though she's never seen one in real life, she knows you need an umbrella to keep dry.

In this picture she's staring out into the backyard during her first rain. She had her rain coat and boots on, but never did venture out into it. She doesn't like getting wet, she immediately demands that any wet clothes be taken off.