Jocelyn turned three years old last Saturday. We invited her everyone in her class, and her neighboring class, and had about 8 kids attend. We had some cute little crafts to do which I think were actually a little too old for them, but they did pretty well anyway, and mostly, they played with all the toys and then had pizza and cake. Much fun was had by all, and Jocelyn had a blast. As requested, she got her “four balloons” (she changed it from three to four). Daddy picked out Ariel, Dora, Clifford, and Elmo mylar balloons for her, and she was so excited it was just too cute. She particularly loves the Ariel balloon (it’s still floating about) which she walked around holding to her body as if it was an oversized doll. I had bought her a cute little dress to be her “birthday dress” and she happily twirled about in it. We noted on the invitations, “Please no presents” but a few of the parents asked to bring something anyway which I had a hard time saying no too 🙂 I think she got just the right amount of presents to not really set a precedent so she thinks birthday = STUFF, and it wasn’t overwhelming to her, which was what we were aiming for with the no presents thing. (Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a no-presents-at-all birthday, she got family presents, so we just wanted to limit the amount, and take any pressure off of our guests.)

Looking back over the last year makes me so sad and nostalgic. This year she changed from baby to girl. I always use a certain criteria to cling to the belief that my kids are still babies:

1. sleeps in a bed (not a crib) and sleeps pretty normally. IE: when you go in to check on them, they’re not sleeping in crazy positions, they pretty much stay in the middle, head on pillow, etc.
2. is potty trained and diaper free during the day

Um.. CHECK AND CHECK. SNIFF!!!

In this past year, Jocelyn has moved from her crib to her big girl bed with a rail, and a few weeks ago, I took the rail off. I took it off while making her bed and left it off with the intention of putting it back on by nighttime, but she insisted on it staying off, and we haven’t looked back. Ethan fell out of bed a few times when the rail first came off his bed, but so far, no bumps in the night from Jocelyn. AND, every time we go in to check on her, she’s in a fairly “normal” sleeping position. She is also diaper free during the day, though she wears one at night. MY BABY! NEXT SHE’LL BE GOING TO COLLEGE!

This struck me even harder as I was looking at pictures of her over the last year. So without further ado, I present a year of Jocelyn: Baby to Little Girl

March 2006

April 2006

May 2006

August 2006

December 2006

January 2007

February 2007

March 2007