Birthday bonanza

Stella celebrated her 3rd birthday yesterday. It was a pretty good party. She had about 10 friends join her along with their respective parents for some pizza, cupcakes and bouncing around. At some point during the party, shortly after the pizza arrived, Stella decided she only wanted to wear her tutu. I guess she wanted to stand out being the birthday girl and all. The pictures below tell the story best.

In other news, we decided to use her birthday as the occasion to ditch her noni (pacifier) once and for all. We kind of missed our window for what would have been a moderately pain free separation about a year ago and figured it was finally time. We had spent about two weeks building up the occasion in conjunction with the birthday build up. The logic was that she was going to be three and that meant she was a big girl, and big girls don't use pacifiers. As an added incentive we proposed she give it to a baby who needs it, in this case, her cousin Fiona. With that plan we went to Walgreens and got a gift bag, deposited the pacifier, and went to Fiona's house. The plan worked well and Stella happily gave it to Fiona. Later that night while getting ready for bed we approached the true test. Through what can only be described as a miracle, Stella went to bed and actually said "thank you for getting rid of my pink noni." Then she rolled over and went to sleep. The whole scene was surreal - like kicking some sort of addiction. She has made passing requests for it today, but hasn't been phased by our reminders that she is too old for it. Another parenting success through dumb luck.