Getting behind already!

So it's been 10 days since my last post and I feel like I'm getting behind in this already.

We had the first of Maya's birthday parties today at my parent's house. Yes, I said the FIRST of Maya's parties. That little girl is having THREE birthday parties. Last year's 68 people were a little much for me to handle in one day, so I decided to split them up into 2 different parties this year. But then I was worried my parents (Omi and Papa to Maya) wouldn't be able to make the trip up here for one of the parties. Since I didn't want them to miss out completely, I decided to have a party for my old hometown friends at their house. It was really fun, but exhausting, and HOT! I remember being so excited when I found out my new baby would have a July birthday! My birthday is in December, and boy does that stink! So I was really excited about having swimming parties, and buying summer stuff for Maya's birthday. What I didn't think about was ... it's HOT in July in the south!

Anyway, Maya had a ball playing in the water! We got a small inflatable pool for my parent's house, and a few different sprinklers for the bigger girls to play in. The minute I started putting water in the pool, Maya headed for it and stepped right in the water ... shoes, clothes, regular diaper and all. My mom tried to get her out, but at that point she was already wet, so I said to just take her shoes off and let her play. I did, however, wait a little too late to change the regular diaper to a swimmy diaper, and the gel stuff busted out. All I can say about that is .... EWWWWW. That gel is some gross stuff! The other problem we had was ants. Lots and lots and LOTS of ants! I didn't see an ant bed where we first put the pool, but all of a sudden a swarm of ants started climbing one side into the pool. So mom went to get the ant spray while E and I dumped water out to move the pool, while trying to keep Maya out of the ants. We ended up having to move it again a little later to the other side of the pool. It didn't even slow her down much.... she just LOVED that little pool! So we emptied it and brought it home. She likes it better than our big pool because she doens't have to wear swimmies or a lifevest or anything. She was just too adorable today! And this birthday I actually managed to get pictures. Last year it was too busy with too many people.

It took the other girls a while to get in the water ... I thought they weren't going to do it at all. But they finally got around the big water ball sprinkler and had fun. Omi got Maya a cake with fish on it for her birthday. I made an Almond Cream Cheese Pound cake with White Chocolate icing for everyone else. It's my most requeted cake, and really good!

Packing up was a nightmare. Luckily a couple of my friends stayed to help. We finally got on the road close to 6:00, and E drove faster than I had ever known him to. I didn't mind, since we got home around 7:15. Maya was sooooo worn out that she didn't even make it out of the driveway before she fell asleep! E took her out to start the van and get her settled in her carseat, and all I did was throw out what was left of the cake I made, pack up the rest of Maya's cake, collect the few things we had left inside and say goodbye to mom and dad. I opened the door to the van and little Miss 2-year-old was fast asleep. She slept all the way home, and then was wide awake when we turned on to our street. ugh. We had hoped to put her straight into bed, but no such luck. So we stayed up a while and played and watched some Wiggles, and then she got real quiet and rubbed her eye a few times. So I put her to bed, but she didn't care for that idea and started crying. We decided she really needed to go to sleep (around 9:00), so we just waited and let her settle herself down. It didn't take too long for her to drift back off.

I got some great pictures today, but not sure how many I'll post here. After we finally changed Maya's diaper to a swimmy diaper, we didn't bother putting her bathing suit on over it. She had such a wonderful time, but I just don't think I want to post pictures of my near-naked baby on the internet. We'll see if I have any good ones when I finally download them.