Kaitlin's Birthday

Wow! Today Kaitlin turned 4 years old! I can hardly believe it has been that long since she was born. She has been anticipating her birthday for a couple of weeks and woke up a couple mornings last week asking "Am I 4 today?" We put a sticker on her birthday on her calendar and marked off all the days until her birthday. That definitely helped her understand.

Kaitlin has also been anticipating the arrival of family for her birthday party. She's been especially excited about having a sleepover at MomMom and PopPop's hotel. They were supposed to arrive on Thursday and Kaitlin started packing her bag on Monday. She did a pretty good job: pajamas, clean panties, books, Crocs, and a blanket. We had a little talk about how when her cousins Sarah and Robbie are here, she is going to want to stay at home and have a sleepover with them at our house. To that, Kaitlin responded that Sarah and Robbie could come to MomMom and PopPop's hotel too! She even added extra pajama pants for Sarah and one of Ethan's pajama tops for Robbie. What a hoot!

Kaitlin has had a little trouble understanding that her party was not going to be on her actual birthday. Apparently, in one of the shows she watches, they had a surprise party for someone because yesterday she told me that when she came home from her swim lesson today all her friends would be hiding in our house and would jump out and yell "Surprise!" I explained that we would celebrate her birthday as a family on Tuesday and her birthday party would be on Saturday. I'm not sure she was too happy with that answer, but she seemed got over it.

Overall, I think Kaitlin had a great day celebrating! She started the morning by opening up her new big girl bike! Then, we played at Frog Legs (an indoor inflatable place), had lunch at Moe's, played at home, went to swim lessons*, ate dinner at Provino's and then opened more presents! We decided to let Kaitlin open some family presents today since she will be getting more presents at her party on Saturday. Here are a few pictures.





*I have to brag on Kaitlin here. She has been going to swim lessons all summer and is finally swimming all by herself. Her teacher told me on Thursday that she had a breakthrough day so today I hid and watched. Kaitlin was swimming all by herself for about 10 feet at a time. I never get to see this because when I take her to the pool, she just wants to swim with her Puddle Jumper.