Shortly after eating cake she wanted to open her presents. I've decided that eating cake before opening the gifts is the best order to do them in. That way, the sugar rush hits in the middle of opening the presents. The reactions are a lot more animated and funny that way. The two main toys that Julia got were a Home Depot Deluxe Tool set and an Easy Bake Oven. She loves them both.
You might think that a tool set for a girl isn't a good fit. For Jules it is. She sees my tools all the time and wants to play with them in addition to the set being good for her development. Every morning on the Disney Channel's she sees Handy Manny and Mouse-ke-tools. Naturally, Julia has been playing with pretend tools for awhile now anyway - so now she finally has her own set.
The Easy Bake Oven says it's for children 8 and older. We ignored that fact because Julia can handle it. She was so excited to get this gift. After we opened the box we realized that we didn't have a 100-watt bulb, so Umpa, I, and Julia ran to the grocery store to get one. Luckily, this added to the adventure for her and made her even more excited. She is so patient for a 3 year old. In addition to the store run, she had to wait 15 minutes for the oven to heat up and then another 12 minutes per batch of sugar cookies. She seemed so content to wait. I love how in the first row of pictures below you can tell she loves it by her romantic stare.
Later on that night Julia got very sad. We couldn't figure out why she was sad. Each time we asked her she kept saying, "I need to have my birthday". I couldn't figure out if she just wanted to stay up so she could enjoy her birthday longer or if she didn't fully understand yet what a birthday really means. Stacey tucked her into bed and I went in afterward to give her a kiss and a hug. She was still sad. After talking to her for a few minutes I finally realized that she was sad because we had only made the sugar cookies and not the yellow cake mix that came with her oven. I guess she didn't feel like her birthday was complete until she had made all of her baked goods. Since it was her birthday I pulled her out of bed and just the two of us made her cake. It was a good father-daughter moment.
After we had finished eating she told me that I could "put her back to bed now". When she woke up the next morning the first thing she told Stacey was, "I was sad because I didn't have my birthday...but Dadda woke me up." That extra hour of time with her was completely worth it.
