FIVE- A Princess Birthday

Happy Birthday to my favorite 5 year old! I really can't believe that Baylor is already 5. Why does time seem to fly when you have kids?!? It seems like yesterday when we had our little miracle baby after years of trying. She truly has brought such joy and laughter into our family and is the perfect middle child. I love you so much Baylor Morgan Smith!!!

She has grown so much in the last year! I love having a front row seat in watching her learn and grow and become this amazing little girl.

Here is what Baylor is up to and like at 5 years old:

•  She just had a check up and is 3 feet 5 1/2 inches, 34 pounds which is the 15 percentile for her BMI. She is small but is taller than Paige at this age.
• She is BUSY and doesn't stick with one thing for very long unless it is watching a show on TV. It is a constant battle with her wanting to watch shows but she does good at playing other things if I am in the same room as her.
• She is always singing or dancing.
• She is loud and talks all the time at home and then in social settings such as at church or at preschool, she is super quiet. I hope that one day she will get more brave in social settings so that people can see and get to know the real Baylor.
• She loves the outdoors. She loves to help when we do things outside whether it is in the garden, digging in the dirt, or raking leaves. She loves to find bugs outside and wants to keep them all.
• She loves water- baths, swimming at the lake, playing in the sprinklers, or playing in the water along one of our many hikes. She is always the first one to get soaked or have her shoes off to put her feet in the water. 
• She loves to draw and color and create, but doesn't necessarily likes to follow the rules that her older sister has when they are doing crafts together.
• She loves Paige but at times has a hard time doing what she says. They are both good at pushing each other's buttons. Baylor looks up to Paige and always wants to do what she is doing but they do fight quite often but also have so much fun together at other times. Baylor absolutely loves McCall and is so sweet to her. I wish she was that kind to Paige but we will see once McCall starts getting into her things how that relationship will change. 
• She loves girly things and anything sparkly. The more sparkle and shine the better.
• She only wears shorts and t-shirts and now that we have colder weather it is a daily battle to get her to wear pants and a jacket.
• She recognizes all the uppercase letters and most of the lowercase. She is starting to see a word and say the sound of the first letter so I know we are getting to the beginning of word recognition and reading which is exciting.
• She LOVES Disney music!
• She is the biggest tease and has the cutest smile that lights up her whole face. She makes the silliest faces.
• She loves to play games, play hide and seek, and do puzzles but doesn't last very long doing any of them.
• She is a great sleeper and falls asleep so fast (within about 5 minutes and I am so jealous of it) and is always the first one up though it's not too early. I love the short cuddles that I get with her in the mornings.
• She likes preschool but is pretty shy with it. I'm a little worried about kindergarten but hopefully by then she will be a little more used to the school idea though I know it will be a big transition with it being all day.
• She says some of the funniest thing- one recently that I want to remember is we were talking about who love McCall the most. It went back and forth with our arms and then she said, "I love her to the ceiling" so I said, "I love her to the moon." And then she said the best thing, "I love her to Jesus!" How do you top that?!?
• She really is your typical middle child and fits the middle child mold. At times I wonder where she came from since she is so different than the rest of us. She can be very stubborn and sassy and then so happy and cute and silly. 
• She is such a fun little girl and we love her SO much!

This year on her birthday, we had other things going on in the evening so we had a small, low-key party on her birthday and saved the big celebration for a couple days later.

Paige has been planning her birthday party for awhile now and Baylor wanted a Princess Birthday. Baylor and I went shopping for a few decorations at the dollar store and Paige looked on Pinterest for some fun ideas.

Our fun princess dinner: Dinglehoppers (Ariel-Forks), We Finish Each Other's Sandwiches (Frozen- Chicken Salad and Egg Salad Sandwiches, Not So Poisoned Apples (Snow White-Apple Slices), Come Taste the Sun Sweet Berries of the Earth (Pocahontas- Raspberries & Blueberries), Chips' Chips (Beauty & the Beast-Two Bags of Chips), Moana's Water (Moana- Ice Water), Frog Drink (Princess & the Frog- Sprite), A True Love's Kiss (Enchanted- Chocolate Kisses), and Pixie Dust (Tinkerbell-Pixie Sticks)

Paige decorated the castle cake and Baylor helped put the princesses on it.

Paige did such a great job! It turned out so cute!

For the party, we had Grandma come visit us all the way from Idaho, Nona and Pops, and Eliza and Brett were all there. We first had dinner and then Baylor was super excited to open up presents so she did that next.

Then we played two princess games that Paige and I came up with. First we had a large marble that represented the pea and then a whole bunch of pillows and you had to see if you could see the pea under the bed (Princess and the Pea). Then we have some princess shoes and I hid them around the house with some candy in them for the kids.

Then it was cake and ice cream time! 

It was fun evening of celebrating our cute 5 year old!