Happy Birthday to my PRINCESS!!

This past week our daughter turned 5!  She has gone from being my first born baby to a 5 year old little girl in the blink of an eye!  I feel like there is a huge difference between ages 4 and 5, and she has developed her own little personality.  Not that she wasn’t ALL personality before, but now she’s even more confident in the person she is becoming.

   

To celebrate, what better theme than a “Sofia the First” Royal Birthday Party?  She has been very excited about her birthday all week.  First she had a little celebration on her actual birthday at school, followed by a birthday dinner with the family.  Instead of the restaurant bringing her cake or ice-cream, we asked for a strawberry lemonade icy and they happily obliged.  This past weekend we celebrated her birthday “Princess Style” with family and friends!

With all this excitement I was trying to keep an extra watch on her pulling at bedtime.  She has been doing great lately, her eyebrows are almost grown back to normal.  Her lashes are still quite stubby, but not too bad.  They definitely take longer to grow back than the brows.  I checked on the baby monitor the night before her birthday party and sure enough, she had pulled the gloves off her thumbs and was kind of hiding under a pillow.  I try not to be the “pulling police” but if I see a chance to help her I will step in.  So I went into her room and asked her why she had her gloves off and she said she was pulling her lashes.  I asked her if she wanted me to sit with her for a little bit longer until she calmed down.  She loves it when I scratch her back or stroke her hair, so we’ve been doing that every night until she’s calm enough to drift off to sleep. 

I think this extra one on one time with ME has REALLY helped her settle down at night, and the pulling has decreased a little bit.  Ever since baby brother was born, the bedtime routine has usually been for me to feed the baby and put the boys to bed, and daddy reads to her and puts her to bed.  This extra Mama time has been really good for her.  It’s a little exhausting for me, as I spread myself thin between the 3 kids, but I know it’s just something I have to do until everyone is relaxed enough to finally fall asleep.   One day it will get easier…. Right??