Julia and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Birthday

I don't know if anyone is still reading my blog since I have been such a slacker at posting, but here I am. Poor Julia had a pretty rough birthday. I didn't even break out my camera. I got some video, but I had a hard time finding a moment that wasn't filled with crying or screaming. It was going pretty good in the morning, she woke up to a brand new Winnie the Pooh table in the living room and got to play with Tori and go to Walmart. But, then I put her down for her nap and it all went bad. Adria didn't want to take a nap and cried for a while before falling asleep. I think this may have put Julia into a light sleep. About 20 minutes after I put Adria down (which was 45 minutes after putting Julia down) they were both awake! For the record, Julia should have slept at least 2 hours and Adria shouldn't have been too far behind. So I got them up and tried to get the house cleaned up so that Tori and Luke (and Rachelle and Sara) could come over for a party. I'm not sure what really happened next, I just know that Julia was feeling quite cranky. She said "no" a lot! I will just cover the highlights of the day and let you fill in the blanks with lots of screaming. Tori and Rachelle came over and I was trying to get the last minute stuff done. I pulled out the cupcakes from the oven and Julia was quite excited about them. As far as I could tell, she wanted to be like Mommy and use the oven mit, but she couldn't quite get the pan with the mit. So she did the logical thing and tried to move the pan closer to herself. Sadly, the pan had just spent 19 mintues in a 350 degree oven. She burned the tips of her fingers. I tried to put her hand under cold water, have her hold ice, wrap her hand in a cold rag, wrap ice in the rag so she could hold it and all of those things just made her more upset. Somewhere in the midst of that, poor Tori tried to comfort Julia. JuJu didn't appreciate that. All I know for sure is that there was a loud slap, Tori crying a lot and a huge bite mark on Tori's shoulder. It could be that Tori bit herself and hit Julia, but I'm pretty sure that isn't what happened. So I decided that Julia was probably hungry. I feel that way a lot lately since Julia won't eat solid foods anymore. Seeing as it is her birthday I figured I would forego the food battle and just make her a smoothie. At this point Luke and Sara arrived on the scene and Julia decided that she was not going to share any of her toys. So I brought her into the kitchen and set her on the counter while I made the smoothie. Luke and Tori also wanted to sit on the counter and watch me slice peaches, but that just seemed like a bad idea. After I finished the smoothie, Julia decided she didn't want to drink it and Luke and Tori thought they would like some. So I gave it to them. This caused a loud round of "no"s from Julia and she finally drank a little bit of the smoothie. Then Sara pointed out that there was poop leaking through the back of Julia's pants. So I changed her diaper and clothes with a large amount of screaming and poop on the wall and I did manage to shut her foot in the drawer. Rachelle and Sara were kind enough to frost the cupcakes during the diaper change so we let the kids have some cupcakes. I didn't light any candles because one bad burn was enough for me, thanks. Since they are only 2 years old, they just wanted the frosting. It was kind of funny that, in the end, they didn't eat much cake, but had eaten almost 1/2 a can of frosting. Gross. I did get that on video so someday Julia will be able to see how messy she was on her 2nd birthday. We let Julia open presents after cake was done. She likes opening presents, who doesn't? We tried to use the bubble blower I got her, but it was from WalMart and so the odds were against me and it didn't work. The kids did run around the courtyard and make a lot of noise though. After that failed attempt at fun, we sent them out to play on the deck so that Adria could sleep for a little while. Julia's new toys were thrown off a few times, but hey, the kids were just learning about gravity, right? I am sure there were quite a few more incidents of Julia hitting Tori and Luke, or Luke or Tori hitting someone or pushing or taking toys, but I only remember Julia falling down the slide and hitting her head...and feeling really tired. One note of interest is that Julia managed to climb into her crib for the first time! She is just so inflexible that I was astonished. Less astonishing is that Tori was in the crib too. I guess we can't leave them alone for too long without something happening. At least she didn't fall and land on her head. It wasn't surprising that Sara and Rachelle decided that they had some place better to be....(actually it was 6pm so they had to go make dinner for their husbands because they are good wives). Ben came home and we went on a walk up to BaskinRobbins to get Julia her free scoop of birthday ice cream. She got the Berry Wild which was blue, purple and green. She was very excited about it. I did get that video too, before and after. She made quite the mess. Then, sadly, I stopped to talk to Rachelle before going home and Julia wanted to get out so she stood up in the stroller...and fell and hit her head on the cement. Needless to say, she fell asleep pretty quickly once she was in bed. Well, we will try again next year. For now, I am heading to bed.