Nora Turns THREE!
Our Nora girl turned three last month! How can that be? It seems like she was just a tiny little babe that we took for walks in the baby carrier up our neighborhood hill in Germany! But alas, she has grown and grown and grown some more — even though she doesn’t technically make it on the weight charts for her age (our petite girl!
I had such a fun time preparing for her birthday party! We attended a birthday for one of her gal pals this summer and it was such a cute theme I decided not to re-invent the wheel and use it for Nora. Her “Tea-Rex” party was the perfect mix of chic, tea party accents with a twist of colorful dinosaurs mixed in. Our girl is definitely a lover of dinosaurs—she will tell you that triceratops is her favorite dinosaur. But she also embraces all things coffee/tea related, so it only made sense to mix the two up and create the best of both worlds! It was so cute to see her in a beautiful teal tulle dress with her dinosaur sweater on top.
The year before Ara and I got married, my Grandma Doris asked me if I’d like to have my Great-Great Grandma Tena’s china set . I am a lover of vintage, family items—especially with a story attached to them and couldn’t pass up this beautiful Theodore Haviland china set from France (circa late 1800’s - early 1900’s). We’ve only used the dishes a few times for holiday entertaining but the set came complete with 12 beautiful tea cups and saucers. We’d never used the tea cups before and I thought…what better time to use them for a tea party?! We filled the tea cups up for the kids with some fruit punch and they sipped with care on their delicious “tea.” It was pretty adorable to look around the table and see ten tiny hands holding tea cups so carefully, yet carelessly.
I had been asking Nora for several weeks what kind of cake she would like and she would always say “strawberry and a strawberry on top!” I took my mama jurisdiction and make the kind of cake sponge flavor I wanted (I knew she’d love the cupcakes more) and went with a simple vanilla and added sprinkles for the funetti look. I made a fresh strawberry buttercream and placed that between the two layers and around the outside. The cake was complete with some Meri Meri dinosaur toppers and the strawberry at Nora’s request. She reached to snag and eat the strawberry before the Happy Birthday song was even complete!
We gathered all the tiny tots up and had them take several swings at the dinosaur pinata! For most of them, it was their first time seeing a pinata. And an even bigger sight to have the chance to hit something on purpose! It was quite a sight to see them all hit it with all their tiny might. Soon enough, yogurt raisin boxes, fruit strips and a few prized packs of M&M’s came spewing out to their delight!
We had so much fun celebrating our THREE year old!
Nora is our independent, engergetic girl, with the most amazing memory (Ara and I constantly wonder what she’s going to do with her memory skills). She wakes up talking, tells stories all throughout the day and goes to sleep talking. She loves music—especially Adele’s “Easy on Me” and Christmas music. Her favorite color is pink and she’s obsessed with sweets (ice cream, cookies, cake, chocolate chips—you name it). She loves Skye from Paw Patrol. She’s very attentive and an abstract thinker. Everyone she meets is a new friend to her and can’t be torn away from a playground. She’s newly obsessed with Beauty & the Beast - all the songs and Belle in her yellow dress (you can usually find her at home in her very own yellow Belle dress). Her best friends are Charley & Chatham. She is such a nurturer and loves being the best mama to her baby Ava doll. She “needs” to be read two books, told two stories and sang one song before we can turn the light out for naptime and bedtime.
