Reese turned 2!

My daughter Reese had her home-based birthday celebration last July 5 (thank God, it was a weekend again). The special guests were our immediate families including Reese’s 6-year-old first cousin, Edlan, her only playmate to date within the family.

The simple gathering from home also included some preparation with it. I took a day off from work to do some chores (dusting and tidying); Had several trips to the mall and bought DIY balloons, banner, party hats, lootbag goodies; Shopped for Reese’s birthday outfit and gave her first ever best-fitting jeans; Surfed for Disney tracks especially Mickey Mouse Clubhouse “Hotdog” song (her favorite); Ordered those cute wooden toys online for our birthday gift to her; And lastly, planned & ordered majority of the food for the afternoon party snack. I did save a lot of time on the last item and reserved my energy to enjoy with Reese on that day. The effortless menu included:

• Red Ribbon cupcake party cake
• Goldilocks various pasta
• Shakey’s grandslam & thin crust pizza
• Selecta Gold chocolate truffles & hazelnut brownie ice cream (her/my favorite)
• And of course the customary hotdog bites, fried chicken drumsticks, lumpiang shanghai (c/o Nanay), and barbeque from Bulacan (c/o Lola Tonie)
  

Gani, together with my sister and her husband setup the balloons. The DIY clown-balloon that I bought was a little bit of a challenge, but they were able to pull it through. For the banner, I took out Reese’s name from last year’s banner and re-use it, good thing it’s made of plastic so it didn’t tear off. The rest o f the preparations were done in a breeze!

At 3pm, we were gathered around the table and sang to Reese the traditional birthday song. And what made the difference compared to last year was that the little girl could sing along with us now. She could really carry a tune. :-) I'll let the pictures below tell the rest of this story...

celebrating with the family

Daddy & Mommy's little presents, wooden toys from Comeandplay Toys

Imagine her saying, "thank you for the party & for the gifts!"

I'm glad that Reese enjoyed and felt more special that day. And I'm looking forward to try something different for her next year.

Playful Reese

Gani arrived home from office and hanged his polo on the chair. Reese was kinda playful that night and took her dad's polo and tried wearing it herself. She was so happy when we let her did that and in turn made her cute pose for this picture.

Here are some of the things I missed to write about her:

• She can read letters A-Z and numbers 1-9 since she was 20 months old. It's strange to me that she learned this faster than the primary colors.
• Recognizes shapes in things and food, especially when she's bored. (circle, square, triangle, heart, star, house, sun, house, T) - shapes from shape sorter.
• Could answer "What's your name?" fluently and use some phrases/sentences correctly.
  
• One time when Gani & I arrived home, she came up to each one of us and asked, "Are you okay?", and she repeated it several times. Probably, she learned it that day and just checking if it works. ;-)
• When she likes me to give her chocolates, she walks straight to the refrigerator and says: "Reese, gusto mo ng chocolate?". She keeps on saying it until I give in to her request, she is so funny! :-)
• If she didn't find her slippers beside her mat, she says: "Slippers, where slippers, where?
• When I have to change her clothes, I have to say: "then raise your arms as high as you can", then she'll respond with: "and say.... Blast off!". She learned that from Little Einstein cartoon.
• Our term for fixing her hair is "parlor, parlor!".
  
• She likes repeating the words/phrases being spoken to her and she can pronounce most of the words properly.
• Her favorite toy nowadays is kitchen/food playset. She got lots of stuff toy but seldom touches them, maybe in time.
• Her favorite cartoons, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins, and Dora.

I'll be blogging about her 2nd birthday soon...