Sweet September Birthdays

We celebrated Violet's 3rd and Henry's 6th birthdays with colorful, candy-covered, kid-decorated cakes. The candy-covered birthday cake has become a family tradition, with the kids coordinating frosting and candy ideas months before their birthday. I'm lucky that, for now, they're satisfied with decorating their own cakes and not clamoring for a truck or castle or some other tricky-to-make cake.

The kids spent their birthday morning building with their new Keva planks (a birthday gift from the grandparents). Henry is a builder and will build with whatever materials are in front of him (including food, laundry, trash, and other non-standard building materials). The Keva planks were a hit! The simplicity of the identical blocks allows for intuitive building, with no distractions over whether you have the right-sized or -styled block for the job. And with no interlocking pieces, structure and stability become much more important. While flipping through the idea book which came with the set, Henry spied a bridge that he didn't believe could be built without using glue. After talking with him a little about cantilevers, he built the structure below. Nice!

Violet is sweet, smart, feisty, and quick to give hugs and encouragement. She loves to follow Henry everywhere, often watching and imitating his every move, insisting on doing exactly what he is doing. It will be fun watching them grow and learn together over this coming year!