Matilda Turns Four!

It's hard to believe how much she's grown!  She's no longer my baby or my toddler; she's a big girl now!  She's imaginative and smart.  She's learning to draw recognizable pictures, she counts and picks out patterns.  Her vocabulary is amazing.  She's a little actress.  She loves to dance and sing.  She just tried swimming and loved it!  She's so tall!  She's a little mama to her baby sister and a best friend to Evelyn.  She can speak some words in French, Spanish and Chinese.  She will go to pre-school 4 days a week this fall.  She sings in the choir and loves Sunday school.  She makes up stories all day long and loves to be read to. She adores My Little Pony, Peppa Pig, and princesses.  Her current favorite movie is Madagascar, but she watches any new movie that she likes repeatedly--to the exclusion of all others--until she has it virtually memorized and, only then, will rotate other old favorites back into the mix.  She  is friendly and curious and loves her family and her routines.  She likes to cook and helps make scrambled eggs nearly every morning--she especially loves to make baked goods with Mommy.  She likes to run and dance and has become more brave.  She's potty trained.  She hates to brush her hair.  She loves to take a bath.  She still sleeps with a lovey and a pacifier.  She wears size 5 clothes and size 11 shoes.  Her favorite color is pink.  She says prayers before dinner and before bed.  She asks brilliant questions and makes up funny jokes.  She remembers everything.  She is a joy and I'm so lucky to be her mother.

To start her birthday off right, we put a bouquet of gerber daisies in her room before she woke up and dressed up her door with colored crepe streamers.  She LOVED the flowers and decorations.  It was her very first bouquet.  She toted them around for a while, touching and smelling them.  Then she threw them up in the air, expecting them to cascade down around her.  They were bound with a rubber band so they just landed with a thud on the floor and we put them in a vase on display.  We also decorated downstairs with balloons and streamers and decorated one of the "big chairs" as a birthday throne for her to sit in.

Grandma and Grandpa and Shanti and Laura and baby Ruth all came over for a lunch time birthday party.  Matilda was happy to have her guests and has indicated that she's starting to think about parties with friends her own age--maybe in a year or two!

She received so many generous gifts!  The Kirady's gave her barbie clothes and a My Little Pony with a train that she loves.  Aunt Natalie, Uncle Chase, and Boston sent her a My Little Pony with a little farm and she slept with it that night!  Grandma and Grandpa Gustafson brought her all sorts of wonderful presents--Prince Charming, a beautiful blue dress, a pretty night gown, a movie--all great!  Shanti and Laura brought her a polka-dot dress and brought cute clothes for Evelyn and Adelaide too so no one was left out.  My grandmother sent her a cute castle card in the mail and we got her two prince dolls and a bunch of ponies.  Evelyn was dying to unwrap something and Grandma had to keep hiding packages that Evelyn was starting to tear into and trying to distract her.  Matilda was absolutely delighted!

I'm really proud of how her cake turned out this year.  Twilight Sparkle is her favorite pony.  I tried a new decorating technique called a frozen buttercream transfer to decorate the cake and it turned out really well!  I will certainly do it again, but I'll be a little more aggressive with smoothing the frosting before freezing it next time, I had to do my best to iron out the squiggly fill lines with the tip of a knife after placing the transfer this time, but I still think it came out great--especially for a first try!
In addition to the FBT on top, I decorated with a rim of sparkly pink sugar crystals and a border of stars on top and around the base of the cake.  On the sides, I piped stars and placed a color coordinated nonpareil on the center of each star.  The inside was a vanilla cake dyed pink and purple to match Twilight Sparkle.  If you're interested, this is the image I was trying to recreate on top of the cake.

Matilda blew out all 4 candles on her own for the first time this year.  She wished to "go to the wild!"  Evelyn ate only frosting.  Adelaide loved her first tastes of cake and Matilda was delighted to have a little taste of cake and frosting and eat a little strawberry ice cream.  She requested Kraft macaroni and cheese for her birthday lunch so she had that with grapes and milk.  The grown ups had grilled fillet mignons that Ed butchered himself from a tenderloin primal.  We served thyme and garlic seasoned grilled sweet potato medallions and grilled onions on the side and had 2 bottles of red white and blue stripped Chandon "champagne" to toast our big girl turning FOUR!  

Gustafson Girly Gourmet

 The girls really love to cook now.  We make eggs together nearly every morning.  Matilda knows just how to stir them up for the scrambled eggs and she's even learning how to crack the eggs herself.

She also likes to help make sandwiches and put fruit on the plate for lunch and is eager to pitch in however she can with preparing dinner! As the experts promised, she's more willing to eat things she helped make too, so it's been working out well.  A little messy, but completely worth it.

Since the house is on the market, we've been baking more often too, to create that welcoming, homey scent.  Evelyn and Matilda have adorable aprons my friend Molly made for them that came in their easter baskets.  And they love making anything they can PINK!  We've had pink chocolate chip cookies and a variety of pink pancakes, cakes, muffins, cupcakes, and breads.  They love anything "Pinkalicious!"
 

 This unassuming loaf of buttermilk honey sandwich bread hides a surprise inside...

Pinkalicious Panda Bread!  It didn't turn out as well as we expected, things rose a little side-ways (I think our dough is just too soft to really make this work properly) but the girls thought it was darling.  If you look closely, you can kind of make out the white panda face, with dark eyes and ears surrounded in pink.  We were hoping for something more like this, but the girls were happy with the effort and it tasted great.

First Bikes

We went to the Mill Race Cyclery on Sunday to pick out big girl bikes for Matilda and Evelyn.  They chose matching hot pink "Lil' Puddin'" bikes.  Matilda picked a pink and purple helmet and Evelyn picked a white helmet with dinosaurs.  Then, since we had a showing going on at home, we went over to grandma's house to ride the bikes on her nice long flat driveway.
They mostly just sit on the bikes and ring the bells right now.  Matilda likes to be pushed around, but I bet by the end of the summer they'll have it down!

Matilda Updates April 2012

Practicing a little song.

Matilda, Matilda, Matilda...

What is new with Matilda?  

Well, she's still "singing" in the church choir (although she doesn't seem to like to actually SING at the services, more just stand there and hopefully leave her dress and her nose alone!) Regardless of whether or not she is sharing her singing talents, she seems to have won over the congregation as we frequently receive compliments about how charming and sweet and funny and smart and cute Matilda is.  She will be starting pre-school at the church in the Fall and is excited to join her choir and Sunday school friends.
She will certainly miss her friends at Kids Play World though!  She has made her first "best friend" outside the family.  Her name is Anabella.  She is the smallest, youngest girl in Matilda's class.  According to her teacher, Matilda took Anabella under her wing and was looking out for her and it's evolved into playing princesses together every day they are at school and Matilda talks about her best friend at home and wonders if she has to eat her dinner, take a bath and go to bed too.  She also has enjoyed playing with some girls from the neighborhood--Jordyn, Jadyn and Hannah.

She is becoming more helpful in the kitchen and want to make scrambled eggs all the time.  She helps with cookies and bread too.  She's usually very good about throwing away trash for me or doing other little chores to help with the baby and is starting to show an interest in helping me clean up the house.  She wants to hold Adelaide but isn't quite strong enough, so I have to remind her not to pick the baby up without a grown up, but mostly she's a great helper and a cute little mommy.
She's also recently discovered both My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, and loves those shows.  She and Evelyn are acting out little stories with their dolls all day long.  She's demonstrating more interest in drawing now and writing and wants to know what every sign she sees says.  She also is becoming very independent wanting to do everything "by myself!" or "just like Mommy."  She can put her own shoes on, go potty, help get dressed, help make her bed and get into her own car seat now!  She also has mastered using her utensils, sitting at the table like a big girl and does a great job drinking out of cups without lids.  

Finally, she's been working on learning French!  She loves to look at the french vocabulary books with me and she's learning two french songs now.  I hope that she'll be able to say a few things when the Kiradys come to visit in August!

Getting pretty with make up, just like Mommy.

Adelaide is 6 months old today!

Beannachtai na Feile Padraig

kiss kiss!

Here comes the airplaine!

The big girls are showing more of an interest in breakfast foods now--scrambled eggs, pancakes, french toast, fruit salad, yogurt and bacon have been recent hits!

Here they are enjoying some blueberry pancakes and bananas together this morning.

By the way, if you're looking for a great pancake recipe, I think the girls and I have pretty much perfected ours:

Gustafson Girls Griddle Cakes
1 C flour
1/2 C corn meal
1 1/4 C butter milk (or whole milk soured with 1 tbs vinegar or lemon juice)
2 eggs (lightly beaten)
3 TBS sugar
2 1/2 TBS melted butter
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
Optional: 1-1 1/2 c fruit tossed with 1 TBS flour (blueberries, raspberries, chopped apples, cherries, bananas, etc. or chocolate chips)

Mix dry ingredients
Create a well in dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients
Stir just to combine
Add 1-1 1/2 C fruit tossed with 1 TBS flour if you choose at this time

Heat a pan over med-high heat
Grease lightly with butter or bacon grease
Spoon batter onto griddle, flip when surface is bubbly and edges are just beginning to look dry.
Serve warm with topping of your choice

Adelaide meets her Great Grandparents

In early February (8-10) Adelaide and I flew down to Florida to visit my grandparents. She did so well on the plane, she fell asleep before we even boarded and didn't wake up until we were getting off the plane on the trip down.



We were lucky to have beautiful weather, my grandma and I took Adelaide for an hour walk in the 80 degree sunshine each day and I think she really enjoyed being out--it was the first time in her life that she was able to go outside and feel warm weather! On each walk we ran into a local mom walking her baby, too. It was so funny to me that Adelaide was out in an undershirt and diaper and the Florida baby was in a sleeper and hat and blanket!

We had a lovely visit with delicious meals and great conversation. I'm so glad that we were able to go down and introduce her.

Matilda's big girl day out

I took Matilda out for a "Big Girl Day" today and we had a fantastic time! First, we went to Jac-n-Jills kid salon to get her bangs trimmed. Next, we went to the nail spa and she got a mini manicure with violet polish and a little flower on each thumb. She sat still, was super polite, and made charming small talk with everyone we met. She was such a good girl, we rewarded her by meeting Daddy out for lunch. We went to Red Lobster. Matilda had macaroni and cheese, watched the lobsters in the tank and was terrified when the nice hostess fished one out of the water and offered to let her touch it.



After our big day out, we came home and had a nice nap. Evelyn was so jealous when she saw Matilda's nails that she was chasing her around yelling "Doz is MINE nails, Matilta!" So, we sat down and did Evelyn's nails too.





Adelaide was blissfully unaware that anything had happened.

Rollin'

Adelaide rolled over for the first time today!

Evelyn being Evelyn

She's such a spunky kid!

Work it

Adelaide turned 3 months old this weekend and got to try out the exersaucer for the first time, or, as we call it, her "office"


It took her a little bit to figure out all the stuff around her.




But she was certainly entertained!


It's exciting to see her get so big and try out new things. And here's her bald spot, just like Evelyn's!

Jolly Happy Soul

The girls are enjoying playing in the first snow of 2012. It was too cold to be outside the last couple days, but they waited patiently for the mercury to rise just enough. They built their first snowman today, complete with hat, scarf, carrot nose and wood chip eyes. They had a blast building their little guy and were singing "Frosty the Snowman" all the while.

If it fits, it ships

Updates on Adelaide

Adelaide is nearly 3 months old now. She's showing an interest in her toys and follows our voices when we talk around her. She can grasp and shake her rattle, enjoys her bath, is sleeping and eating well and starting to sit in her bumbo seat.

At her 2 month check up on December 16 she was 23.5 inches long, 12.1 pounds and had a head circumference of 40cm. She's up there on the Gustafson Girl Growth curve and has nearly doubled her birth weight already, you'd never know she started out small by looking at her!

She's fully out-grown her newborn clothes and is now in 0-3 and 3-6 month outfits, depending on the cut. She's a very alert baby who seems to enjoy lively surroundings and is generous with her smiles and has a very expressive little face. Her rare big frowns crack me up and she still has a bit of an elvish look about her.

Her dark hair is falling out and she has a bald spot on the back just like Evelyn did. Her brows and lashes are still very blonde and her eyes are still grey-blue for the moment. I imagine her hair will come back blonde just like Evelyn's did, but I'm not ready to make a guess about her eye color.

The Christmas Post 2011

After trimming the tree, we started the Christmas season with my (I thought) clever plan of taking pictures of the children sleeping for the Christmas card so I wouldn't have a repeat of 2009.

Things began cherubically

but sleeping big kids are kind of disheveled.

and the flash made Evelyn grimace.

So, I moved on to posing some shots.

Again, Adelaide was pretty easy, although quite committed to my original "sleeping child" idea

I'm in a stocking.... zzzzzzzzzz.

Evelyn loves to take pictures, but is also easily distracted. Here she's trying to figure out how to put Santa on the sleigh.

This was adorable but we ultimately decided it was too bare for the US Postal Service.

There we go! Matilda did a splendid job posing for the card this year and I let her eat the candy cane when we were done.

The first Sunday of Advent our church hosted an Advent wreath making brunch after the service. The kids enjoyed donuts and fruit and Matilda really loved helping to make the wreath. It was a bit more challenging with Evelyn, the event lasted much longer than her attention span, but she did help put a few decorations on our family wreath and she loved lighting the candles at dinner time, singing happy birthday Jesus (every night for 28 nights) and blowing out the candles.

After collecting the supplies, Daddy showed the girls how to put the greens into the floral foam

Matilda did a great job sticking the boxwood and assorted greenery into the wreath and really seemed to enjoy herself.

Evelyn was much more interested in running around, hiding under the table and tickling Daddy with the wreath supplies.

Tada! Thats our wreath! We put the candles in at home.

Silly Evelyn!

In mid-December, Ms. Nina, the director of the Little Cherubs church choir, hosted a "Happy birthday, Jesus!" party following choir practice. There were little tables set up in the youth lounge, a buffet with cheeses, fruit, veggies, meatballs, deli meats and lots of sweets, fancy candy canes at each place, punch, and even a birthday cake. Ms. Nina invited the siblings to attend too and made (and wrapped!) a blanket for every child (even the siblings who are not in the choir!) The kids sang songs, read a story, unwrapped their blankets and enjoyed the goodies. After the party, we took the girls to visit Santa at our neighborhood store. He was a jolly santa with a real beard!

Evelyn was scared and pulled a Randy.

Matilda was determined to be VERY good.

Matilda and Santa chatted for just a minute.

She assured him she was a good girl and asked for a princess doll.

We did so many fun things getting ready for the big day! We purchased a large Advent calendar from noel eternelle in Montreal last July and put a candy in each door for the girls. They loved opening the doors to find their treat and count down to the big day! We read tons of Christmas books--we added a few to our collection this year, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The girls watched Charlie Brown Christmas and Frosty the Snowman a million times along with some Christmas specials of their favorite pre-school shows, but Matilda found the Grinch movie to be too scary. I watched Polar Express with them as well, but there were some parts Matilda found too frightening and we had to fast forward.

We baked cookies... LOTS of cookies. And we worked on Christmas crafts. The girls made Ruldoph, Frosty and Santa faces on paper plates with foam stickers, created plastic snow globes, decorated gift bags, and helped make hot chocolate gift sets for Kim and Eric and Grandma and Grandpa to put under the tree. With Kim's help, they also made penguin ornaments. Daddy and Adelaide made a little footprint ornament for her first christmas and I put together a photo ornament for her as well as a calendar and framed some of her birthday pictures for the family.

Matilda's cherub choir sang twice this December, once on the 18th and again at the Christmas Eve service. Kim and Eric arrived on Christmas Eve and the whole family attended the service followed by a nice dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house. After dinner, we went home to get cleaned up for bed and feed Adelaide. Then Daddy read Twas the Night Before Christmas to the girls and we opened the last day on the Advent calendar where the girls found an extra special candy--chocolate covered marshmallows! The big girls hung their stockings by the fireplace and went to bed. Kim, Eric, Ed and I stayed up until midnight wrapping presents, filling stockings and getting the house ready for guests the next day.

Christmas morning, the tree was absolutely stuffed with gifts from Santa, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and friends. We kept the girls upstairs until grandma and grandpa arrived, but they were so excited when they woke up and realized Santa had left a gift in their bedrooms. I was washing dishes when I heard Matilda yell "Santa came! Mommy, did Jesus find you!?" It was so cute. He left each girl a "Zhu Zhu Pet" which is just a little robotic hamster that rolls around and makes funny noises. Adorably, they seemed satisfied (until we got downstairs) with the idea that that might be all Santa got for them!

When they saw all the gifts they were a bit overwhelmed, I think. Matilda was delighted that Santa remembered to bring her a princess doll. There were so many gifts that the girls ran out of steam and stopped opening 1/2 way through and had to come back and finish later with Grandma. Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts and the trinkets in their stockings. It was a fun morning. Once the unwrapping was over and cleaned up, I made gingerbread waffles. Even the girls were brave enough to try them this year and it's a Christmas tradition I have no intention of abandoning!

There was plenty of food this year. Ed ordered a Jamon Serano from Spain, along with a stand and special knife to make the delectable delicate slices. There were also 100 oysters overnighted to our door that he and Eric expertly shucked, displayed on a bed of rock salt and slurped down. There were cookies and candies galore, cheese, olives, and dolmas. For dinner we served prime rib roast with port wine sauce, turkey breast, gravy, creamed spinach, potatoes au gratin and home made dinner rolls, accompanied by a Jeroboam of champagne (4 bottles) Shanti and Laura joined us for Christmas dinner and the conversation and company were delightful.

I am sure that there are pictures and videos somewhere of the advent calendar and

maybe cookies and the cherub choir and the ham and the whole family at Christmas Eve dinner...

but I can't find them. Once I unearth them, I'll add them here for posterity.

My gift from Jim and Joanne (photography backdrop and lighting kit) came in a bag so large we couldn't resist putting the family into it!

Evelyn is the only kid I know who is excited to receive clothing as a gift, here's one of the many princess nightgowns she got and wants to wear constantly.

In the days following Christmas the girls had a blast playing with their new toys and with their relatives. On the 29th, Jim, Eric, Kim and Edward went to Milwaukee for a basketball game and the girls and I had a quiet afternoon and evening at home unwinding from all the festivities. On the 30th Ed left for California to watch the Rose Bowl. My dad came out on the 31st to visit and help out with the girls.

By the 3rd of January our decorations were put away, our guests had all returned home, Ed was back in town and life has gone back to normal. It's always sad to see Christmas go, especially such a fun one that the girls were so excited about, but I know next year will be even better now that Matilda and Evelyn are old enough to remember what we did this year. It's wonderful to be building our family traditions and lovely memories for years to come.