Planning

So it suddenly occurred to me that I need to start planning birthday parties, since the girls will be a year old in a month and a half. :crying: I'm also now remembering what a hard time I had with Brodie turning 1 (emotionally).

Anyway, Brodie would like to have a "Batman" party this year (I was pushing for a non-licensed/trademarked theme, but hey, whaddya gonna do?). Today I asked him what he thought we would need for his party. With NO hesitation, he responded with "Streamers, fun party games, balloons, and party hats." :rolling eyes: Hmmm. Obviously this child has not put ANY thought into his birthday.
Essentially, this party seems to already be planned. I asked him about food, and inwardly cringed at the thought of serving PB & J and pretzels to everyone. He said we need to have cheese, crackers, salami, turkey, and fruit. Hmmm. That actually will work, and is easy! The only snafu, is when I asked (again, cringing) what party games he was thinking of, he said, "A waterslide." Yeeaahh. At the end of October....in my yard. We will work on this. There are probably only goint to be 3 other kids there other than him (and the babes, of course), so I may just set up a few different activities, rather than games. Next year we can think about a "friend" party. Now I have to figure out what to buy my almost 4 year-old for a gift. We have a few ideas.

I have to tell everyone how much I love the set up of my house right now. While I would love nothing more than to knock a huge porthole between my kitchen and living room for supervision purposes, I do love the fact that I can close the doors and gate off the kitchen. These ladies can have complete run of the hallway. I'm realizing that I may have to own 4 or 5 gates! We currently have 3 gates. One is a swinging, mountable gate that we will probably put in the upstairs hall. We have a gate for the bottom of the stairs, and one that we use interchangeably for the kitchen, living room. I'm probably going to need 2 more so I can gate the hallway and kitchen at the same time to "pen" the babies in while I make dinner if Tom's not home, and we may need to put a gate to Brodie's room and teach him to climb over it. Currently we are teaching him to close his door, but I'm worried about fingers getting caught. Oh, and while the mountable gate will serve it's purpose at the top of the stairs, I may have to gate off the girls room when they are out of cribs to keep them from exploring the rest of the upstairs. We may have to draw up a "skee-matic." There might be a better place for the mountable gate (doesn't work at the bottom of the stairs before you suggest it).