Birthday weekend

While it may have been Mother's Day this past Sunday it was also N's 3rd birthday, so we spent the weekend celebrating the boy who made us mothers!! How can our baby be 3 already??? It seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye. Our tiny helpless baby has turned into a stubborn independent, funny, smart, amazing big boy.

Newborn N

3 years old

On Saturday we had a party for 15 of N's friends at an indoor play space. He had a blast playing in the tunnels, running around with his friends and checking out the pretend play areas. The big boy came to his party this year and N was so happy to have him there. A couple of people commented to me that they could see how much N looks up the the big boy. It's not always a good thing, but for the most part both boys have benefited from having each other in their lives. 

We had tried to prepare N in the week running up to his birthday as to what would be going on and what we expected of him on the day of his party. He is used to just doing his own thing when he goes to the play space and when we took him there for another party he didn't want to follow along with the timing of the party. He just wanted to keep playing and not stop for pizza and cake, so we told him he would be sitting in the special party chair and that he had to stay in the party room for the whole pizza and cake part. He did so well and only wanted to get up when the big boy got up to come and check out the baby I was holding. By the end of the 2 hrs all the kids, including our own were exhausted, but I think that everyone had a great time! 

On Sunday  we started the day watching N's birth movie. We had an amazing Douala with us during N's delivery and she took hundreds of great pics. We always watch it on his birthday (and plenty of other times too!) and this year the pregnancy hormones got the best of J and she just might have shed a few tears while she watched it :-) N loves to watch himself being born and while J doesn't like the actual c-section part N loves to talk about his arrival butt first!

Then he got stuck into all his gifts. I think he did really well this year with lots of gifts to go along with his love of pretend play. He got lots of dress up clothes, a lot of clothes (not a popular gift), cars, quite a few water pistols and after a long search I finally found a boy baby doll that isn't scary looking.

Mountain of gifts

Getting in a little practice

Arrgh matey

Packaging is always more fun!

Mommy and her mini me

After a rough start I finally pulled off his home made cake for the family party on Sunday. Although it took a couple of attempts and I ended up having to get up early on Sunday morning to finish it I was happy with the end result. I'm not sure why it's so important to me that he has a home made cake every birthday but I hope it's a tradition that I can continue. Thank goodness for pintrest which I had been browsing for weeks to get the inspiration. 

We have lots of leftovers and I'm not doing a good job of staying away from them. Guess I will have to  get back to my diet after J's birthday next week!! 

We had such a great weekend celebrating with friends and family. N was totally spoilt with all the attention and gifts that he got and now to top it all off we are all sick :-( J is probably suffering the most as it only adds to the exhaustion of early pregnancy and she can't take anything to help her feel better. Hopefully we will all shift this cold quickly and be feeling better soon.