Cora Is Four!

Four years of Cora in our lives. Time to celebrate. Her actual birthday was a week ago Wednesday, and her party was last Saturday. 

Door decorations! I put them up after bedtime on the night before her birthday.

 I taped the streamers across the door frame so that she could break through them in a triumphant birthday morning victory gesture. On her birthday morning, when I got out of the shower (Geoff had already left for work) I heard noises downstairs.

"Cora, are you downstairs?"
"Yes . . . . . . is it my birthday??"

I looked and she had carefully removed the bottom two pieces of tape on one side and crawled through the opening down at floor level. She is more ninja than quarterback.

She went to school, where I believe there was some singing involved. And although there are only nine kids in her class, one of them shares her exact same birthday. So double singing. 

Birthday dinner request: fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and broccoli.

 

 On Saturday afternoon we had her party at Monkey Joe's-- a giant indoor space with seven or eight large bounce houses filled with slides and ladders and tunnels and such. Cora and Hazel both love it there.


I was pretty nervous about the party--our family's first foray into a "friend party" and we're new in town, etc.--but luckily it went really well.

Cora can handle the bounce houses pretty independently, so I actually didn't see as much of her during the jumping part of the party, though she was hanging out with her various friends while jumping--here she is disappearing into a maze of ladders and slides.

  

I'm amazed at how bold and how capable Hazel is in these structures, but she still needs pretty direct supervision, especially with so many bigger and heavier kids bouncing nearby, so I was with her a bit more.

 (She sat in some fruit punch--that's not a leaky diaper.)
  

And here's everyone gathering in our party room for the cake and ice cream proceedings.

 The facility is open to the public in addition to up to four parties going on at once, but each party gets its own room.

Cora generously sharing her throne for a minute to give Hazel a taste of the glory.


Cupcakes! Cora blew out all of those candles, but not all in one breath.

 

Thankfully we had a really good turnout from the preschool class, since those are pretty much the only kids we know so far.

 Four-year-olds are the cutest!

Hazel is starting to miss her nap by this point, but she held it together really well through ninety-five percent of the afternoon. 

Monkey Joe himself stopped by for a visit.

After cake we opened presents.

And then, with everyone all hopped up on sugar we sent them back out for a little more jumping, and then everyone was off to go home--short and sweet!