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Perfection – 2 years later (happy birthday sweet sweet Ella girl)
Perfection Originally uploaded by happykatie. Ella turns 2 years...
Happy One Week Birthday, munchkin
One week ago today, Adam was timing contraction lengths and I...Ella as a small almost-walking Bunn
Here’s Ella back a few months ago as a very small, open-mouthed...Because she is our Joy…
Our little one finally has a name! Actually, she probably...Beautiful world, beautiful girl
Saw you standing there Originally uploaded by happykatie. Life...
The 1st grade class garden
One of the many things I love about Ella’s awesome (public) elementary school is that every class has a nice sized raised gardening bed to grow veggies and flowers in throughout the year.
A few times a year, the kiddos channel their inner farmer and harvest the fruits of their labor. I think the fresh air and dirt under the nail approach is a great way to encourage lifelong real food love — and it’s so cool to see how excited they all are to eat the goodies they bring home to share.
I thought these radish gems were particularly pretty a few months ago. We cut them up and put them into a salad that Ella rinsed, assembled and served at the dinner table that night. She was beyond proud.
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Bedtime rule bending
She’s not supposed to sleep in our bed on weekdays. Her bedroom is perfectly cute and full of neat girl / curious soul playthings.
And school nights mean having as much undisturbed slumber as possible.
But on the mornings that follow the nights she talks her way into sleeping with us, there’s absolutely nothing as stunningly beautiful as seeing her face next to mine.
Rules are meant to be broken sometimes.
Electric kiddo
Somehow or another, another year has slipped by and Ella is almost ready to celebrate her sixth birthday with the kind of glee that only an ‘old 5′ year old can.
She’s a beautiful force of nature, a hurricane of hilarity and insight. The kind of spirit that takes your breath away and makes you want to stop blinking to avoid missing a single second.
A sweet and simple Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a major holiday in our home – not because we want to re-create cheesy mall jewelry store commercials, but because I personally love swathing the house in red, hearts, glitter and craft projects.
I have a fair amount of Valentine’s-y decorations, but this year we picked up a few big packs of styrofoam hearts and hilarious, colorful cut outs to glue on them with glitter and stickers.
These made up not only the majority of our fun wall / door art, but also acted as giant Valentine’s to share with friends and family too. Add in a couple of wreaths, homemade heart garland and things with sequins – you’ve got yourself a cool decor thing going on.
And sometimes it’s the little colorful touches that make Ella excited for _______ <enter month / holiday / season here>. Fun bowls with thematic candy, trinkets to give to visitors or stickers are just as gasp inducing as a giant lit up Christmas tree.
Fun kiddo ideas on Pinterest
I’ve been collecting more happykiddo-related ideas for home, weekend fun and kitchen antics here on my ‘happykiddo’ Pinterest board – would love to see what you’ve been up to as well!
Scooter adventures – weeee!!!
This year’s scooter upgrade got lots of love – we graduated Ella from a (super terrific for younger kids) Mini Kick-Wheel Scooter to this hot pink Razor Wild Style Kick Scooter
It took a few days of trial and error until she mastered supreme scootering balance, but now I don’t know what she ever did without that brake on the back wheel. Homeslice is a scooter-happy dare devil 
See more (mostly) Wordless Wednesday posts and be insta-pals with us on Instagram.
Read the (sweet) writing on the wall
Our family is addicted to awesome wall graphics, but up until this point we’ve geeked out mostly around Blik decals that turn our boring walls into galleries of awesomeness.
But yay!! Today I found a new place to fulfill this inherent desire to cover every inch of blank wall with something colorful – Wallcandy Arts.
Today, I am completely adoring their cupcake decal: removable, re-usable AND functional (chalkboard scribbling, what what?).
A 5th birthday with Spiderman (+ Ella)
Every year with Ella gets better and better. Her 5th birthday this year was very low key – especially as her first day of kindergarten started the very next day.
We ate birthday brunch at Radical Eats, played like crazy people and opened gifts with cake before hitting the sack early for the big day to come.
Birthday loot included:
- Super fab hot pink Tony Hawk BMX bike (her very first – with training wheels of course)
- Spiderman glove / web shooter thingie
- Buzz Lightyear toy
- Light up, spiky bouncy ball (much loved)
- Hello Kitty lip gloss set
- Cars candy
- Book of flower and heart tattoos (a big deal around these parts)
- Strawberry cheesecake with Spiderman candles
First day of kindergarten
We’ve graduated to a new neighborhood with a great (public = no massive tuition!!!, Vanguard program) school within a 30 second drive – but unfortunately we found ourselves one street away from the appropriate zoning.
Seriously, one street. After an initial application, testing, interview and lottery process (WHEW)- we got the good news, Ella made it! I hopped up and down like it was Harvard.
Her first day was great, especially since her birthday was the day before (5 years old, holy cow) and she was basically crowned princess of the class:
This year has started out effortless, she has a fantastic teacher who communicates regularly via email and notes home (super responsive) – with NO TYPOS. Is this heaven!?!? Active PTA, super cool parents, really great building and just down the road from our sweet little home.
Important Kindergarten items of note:
- Backpack = turquoise Lands End backpack / clip on lunchbox (thanks Aunt Peggy!)
- Water bottle = Threadless ‘Funkalicious’ astronaut design Thermos
- Class folder = baby Emperor penguin
- Favorite lunch = peanut butter and jelly sandwich (followed closely by my green beans and potatoes)
- Best part about school so far = new sandbox, ‘spinners’ and dinosaur bones on playground
