We played inside for an hour or so after breakfast and waited for the morning to warm up enough to take Jake out to the backyard to see his present from us, a pirate ship water table that arrived just in the nick of time. We're hoping that this water table gets put to good use this summer since it'll be too hot to take the baby to the pool for an extended amount of time, so we're making our own water park in the backyard. Jake played with the pirate ship for a good while...until he realized how fun it was to pour water on himself. Since he was still in his jammies, no harm no foul!
For lunch we met our neighbors at "Chick-o-way", Jake's second request of the day. Nuggets, fruit and chocolate milk made him happy as a clam and he never even noticed that Deric and I split his free birthday milkshake. ;) Our neighbors were so kind to get Jake some big bubble wands that he just loves and a set of Lincoln Logs. He's really enjoyed building "big walls" and a few log cabins with my help or his dad's. I'm all about any toy that's open-ended and I'm looking forward to when he really gets the hang of his building sets all by himself. Right now he still needs some help building towers with Legos or the Logs because he doesn't yet understand some concepts like needing the base of the structure to be bigger than the top, but we're working on it! I love to ask him what he's making and hear the wide variety of answers.
Side story: tonight Jake got a splinter from playing with some pieces of scrap wood outside and as we were trying to get it out, I tried to distract him by asking him what animal he would want to be. His answer was a "hippo-giraffe-lion!" All one word, apparently all one animal. Not quite sure how that would work. ;)
Back to the birthday celebrations. The rest of Friday was pretty low-key since Jake's birthday party was the next morning and Deric and I still needed to get some things done. We ate dinner outside and played in his water table and enjoyed a gorgeous spring day. After dinner we ran over to church to play on a big inflatable that had been rented for an event going on. I'm pretty sure Jake thought the inflatable was solely for his birthday, and we didn't tell him otherwise. :) Jake jumped his heart out in the bounce house but didn't quite understand why I wouldn't jump with him...so instead I took on the role of pushing him down the slide. For some reason, he didn't want to go down the slide unless I pushed him but he laughed so hard when I did!
On Saturday morning, we woke up and went right into party mode. Jake's friends--and some of their parents-- came over to play in the backyard at 10am. We set up a [much smaller] bounce house that we got for Christmas, the sand and water tables, and basically all of Jake's outdoor toys all over the backyard. The weather was just perfect and the kids played hard, especially on the bounce house, while the adults sat back and relaxed/refereed every so often.
Around 11:30 we served lunch for everyone: pizza for adults and dinosaur-shaped sandwiches for the kids (thanks to a sandwich cutter I found on Amazon). The party was very loosely dinosaur themed, as in the cake and the sandwiches had something to do with dinosaurs. For a few weeks leading up to Jake's birthday, I would ask him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. His answers rotated between a green dinosaur, a truck, and Thomas. But most of the time he wanted a dinosaur, so I did my best with that request. I won't say how long it took me to frost the cake...just way too long. But it turned out mostly how I hoped, so it was a win!
Around 11:30 we served lunch for everyone: pizza for adults and dinosaur-shaped sandwiches for the kids (thanks to a sandwich cutter I found on Amazon). The party was very loosely dinosaur themed, as in the cake and the sandwiches had something to do with dinosaurs. For a few weeks leading up to Jake's birthday, I would ask him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. His answers rotated between a green dinosaur, a truck, and Thomas. But most of the time he wanted a dinosaur, so I did my best with that request. I won't say how long it took me to frost the cake...just way too long. But it turned out mostly how I hoped, so it was a win!
We sang Happy Birthday to Jake inside since the wind picked up so much that the candles wouldn't stay lit, then promptly took the cake and ice cream back outside, where most every little party guest chose chocolate cake. (One circle of the cake was chocolate, the other vanilla. Since I don't like chocolate cake, I can't say I was sorry to see a lot of vanilla left!) I had to make sure my hard work didn't go unnoticed so I was sure to point out to Jake that the cake was shaped like a 3. ;) And he loved the dinosaurs!
After the party wrapped up, Deric and I realized that a morning birthday party is the way to go. Jake's last two parties were in the afternoon so the morning was spent prepping and by the time the party was over, the day was gone and we were beat. But celebrating in the morning left us all day to relax and gave Jake plenty of time to enjoy his new gifts. All in all, a great birthday weekend. Its so fun to celebrate Jake and the amazing kid he's becoming. I'm blown away by his thoughtfulness and willingness to help with anything and everything. He's goofy and silly and I love watching him laugh so hard when he plays with Deric. I wish I could freeze time and enjoy this age with him...but I would never choose to freeze time while pregnant. ;)
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