Monroe Parenting

Keegan practicing his mad-gaming skills for his teenage years….

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We took the kids to see “Horton Hears a Who” last night and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised! After the debacle otherwise known as “The Grinch”, I was a little hesitant to see another Seuss movie on the big screen. But since the movie stars a giant elephant, Caitlyn really left us no choice. So we settled on the 7 p.m. showing and off we went.

We got the kids settled in with their big bucket of pop corn and barrel, I mean cup, of fruit punch, and I began to wonder how in the world this Seuss book could be stretched into a full-length film. There’s just not that much going on in it. Horton finds a speck, hears shouts from the speck, and pledges to protect it on a clover at all costs. The rest of the jungle animals think he’s crazy (which is helped along by an overbearing kangaroo who needs to have complete control of everything — in the movie voiced by Carol Burnett), and Horton is forced to flee to get the Whos to safety. That’s about the jist of the book.

The movie expanded on that a bit by creating a fantastical world where the Whos live and gives their lives more meaning than simply existing on a speck. They have jobs, homes, families. The mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters and 1 single son. As Horton says, “A person is a person no matter how small.”

The end of the movie does get a little frightening for younger kids as the jungle animals try to rope and cage Horton and boil the speck in oil to put an end to his delusions, but it all turns out okay in the end (naturally). By the time the credits were rolling though I could honestly say that I had a good time watching the movie with my kids — and that’s what makes a good family film.

Now that I have a minute to reflect on Caitlyn’s birthday, let me tell you what her favorite thing was ….. Perhaps it was the trip to Chuck E Cheese?? No. Was it the really cool elephant items Mommy hunted down for her? No. Was it the special birthday breakfast made especially for her? No, no, no.

Despite all of my planning, I was upstaged at the last minute by Dave, lol. He decided to go to the Apple store and buy Caitlyn the Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham computer game. Now that in and of itself is VERY cool, but do you suppose he just wrapped it and let her open it when she got up that morning?? Oh, no, no! He had to go one step further and make a scavenger hunt for her to locate the gift first!! He took pictures of her favorite stuffed animals and then hid them around the house.

So when she got up that morning, propped up next to Pinkie the pink elephant was a picture of Big Duck. Caitlyn knows Big Duck lives in the bathroom so she ran in there and found a picture of Ella the elephant. From the picture’s background, she could tell the elephant was on the toy box. When she got to the toy box, she found a picture of Rosebuddy the dog sitting next to the computer. And next to the computer was a picture of Moo Cow sitting on the staircase. When she got there, she discovered her cow sitting on top of her new game. And that was ALL she talked about. All. Day. Long.

It’s party time!!

So last Sunday we busted out all things with pink elephants in honor of Caitlyn’s 4th birthday. Dave and I were a bit exhausted since Keegan had kept us up almost all night coughing, but since he seemed to perk up a bit as the day went on, we thought we were in the clear.

Caitlyn put on her pink elephant shirt (seen in the photo above) and waited anxiously to greet her guests. She was quite the little hostess!! And she couldn’t wait to blow out the candles on her cake:

I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful that cake smelled! Mmmm, like a field of cherries (which would be about right since the cake was cherry chip!). Caitlyn and her new elephant, Pinkie, (made by my friend Katrina’s mom) danced in front of the cake while everyone sang.

After everyone finally went home, we ended up having to call the doctor for Keegan because it sounded like he might have croup. On the doctor’s advice, we took him to Dundee Urgent Care where he was diagnosed with the same nasty upper respiratory ickiness that everyone seems to have right now. A little Benadryl and some rest and he was just fine. Now why didn’t I think of that?!

Okay, I can finally play catch-up here for everything I’ve missed this week now that Dave has all the photos available so you can see what I’m talking about!!!

Last Saturday was the Princess/Prince Party at the Dundee Branch Library (where I also work, of course!).  Caitlyn was convinced the party was thrown completely in honor of her birthday, and we just let her think that……

Miss Kelli did a fantastic job of having all kinds of crafts and activities available for all the kids, including a throne area for picture taking, wand/sword and crown/tiara making, and door hangers and bookmarks for the kids to decorate. Caitlyn enjoyed twirling around while oogling all the princesses on the walls and she did like “slaying” the dragon with silly string! Despite all the snow we had last weekend, a ton of kids still managed to turn out for the event and have a good time!

Princess Caitlyn on her throne.

She is soooooo excited! What to do first?!

A wand and tiara complete the royal look.

I will post more later (with pics!) about the fun of Caitlyn’s birthday and her pink elephant party, but I just wanted to wish her a quick happy birthday!! I can’t believe my baby is 4!!!!

Looking forward to Caitlyn’s party on Sunday, I’m trying to take stock of everything that still needs to be done before my house is considering “company worthy.” I’m sure everyone has had their moments where they push loose clothing under the bed or stuff toys into the closet at the last minute — as long as no one opens the doors or checks for dust bunnies you should be fine.

But with this party I’m thinking that if I need to super clean, I might as well do it right and be done with it. That’s right — I’m breaking out the Swiffer!! Sweeping up kitchen crumbs and running the Swiffer across the floor should be the easy part of my day. The hardest part is picking up the toys and making sure they stay picked up before company comes over. I don’t know how many times in the past few days I’ve rounded up Keegan’s blocks and put them in the container only to hear the sound behind me of them being dumped all over the floor.

Whenever I clean, that area automatically becomes a kid magnet. Toys in the proper bins?? Not for long! Trucks lined up neatly against the wall? That doesn’t even last for five minutes. Perhaps it’s because “new” toys get unearthed when Mommy picks up. Like yesterday the kids “discovered” their Easter bunny potato heads. And that kept them busy long enough for me to drag another clean basket up laundry up the stairs. …

Aside from cleaning, I remembered that I need to make a batch of pink cupcakes for Caitlyn to take to storytime on Monday. Of course, this will need to be made Sunday night after the big party… *sigh*. A co-worker asked why I didn’t just go out and buy some cupcakes for Caitlyn to take. To be honest, that thought never even crossed my mind (which is pretty sad I suppose). Caitlyn had so much fun picking out the flavor of cupcakes and choosing a frosting that it seems almost mean to pick some up already made at the store. Besides, it gives me a chance to bust out my KitchenAid mixer again!

We’re having Caitlyn’s 4th birthday party this Sunday and it ought to be interesting. She wanted — of all things — a PINK ELEPHANT party. Because elephants are “amaaaazing with their trunks” and everything should be pink, according to her. So I’m just sort of wingin’ it with the decorations because the only pink elephant stuff I could find was drunken pink elephants from the 60s!!

I thought about making her cake myself (for all of 5 minutes) and then just decided I don’t have the time –or talent — to handle it. I was thinking I could cut out the basic head and ears shape from a sheet cake and then use Twinkies for the legs and trunk. It would look fine because I was going to cover the whole thing in pink frosting……. But then I woke up from that little daydream and called Monica’s Baker Boy. (And if you ever had one of their paczkis then I’m sure you can imagine how good the cake will be!)

Other than that, I’m not making gobs and gobs of goodies like I usually do. It gets to be too stressful and then I can’t really enjoy the party. I plan to order a bunch of pizzas, make some chili cheese dip in the crock pot and then later have ice cream and cake. Caitlyn is thrilled with the idea and besides, she’ll be too busy oogling her new stuff to notice the limited selection.

As I was toasting my bagel this morning before I walked out the door to go to work, Dave came into the kitchen and gave me a strange look.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.  “You’re humming the theme of ‘Elmo’s World.’ ”

“Yeah, so? Your point?” I couldn’t see what the big deal was.

“Shawna, there’s no kids here this morning! And you’re humming ‘Elmo’s World!’

Oh my. Even though the kids managed to coax Grandma into letting them stay over last night, that didn’t stop the furry red monster from joining us for breakfast!