You've Had A Birthday

Eli is a three-year old!!!

He helped me make his cake the night before his birthday.

Eli's been talking about his birthday nonstop ever since Carson's birthday.

We've started a tradition where the kids wake up to a house full of balloons on their birthday. With Eli's birthday we added these little blow things that I'm not sure what they're called. The boys loved them.

Eli's only birthday request was that we have party hats. He picked the party hats out himself.

The boys celebrated while a special birthday breakfast was being made.

Eli had been going through a bit of a rough patch. He was experiencing a month of unprovoked tantrums, defiance, whining and so forth. He was a completely different boy on his birthday, and he's been an angel ever since. Maybe he had to have one last bout with the terrible twos before transitioning into a three.

Favorite activity of the day was getting in Carson's face to see how close he could get the noisemaker to Carson's face. Fun for all!

We bought a Plasma Car for Eli's big gift. The car is supposed to kind of drive itself when you wiggle the steering wheel back and forth. We thought it would be a no-fail present.

Turns out the car is a little beyond Eli's capabilities. He kept saying it was too wobbly and didn't spend as much time with it as we were expecting. So onto the other presents!

Here's Eli opening up some Thomas the Train underwear.

This is probably the last year he will be genuinely excited to open underwear for his birthday. He also got socks and a spelling puzzle. The spelling puzzle ended up being a bigger hit than the car. He played it for about 3 hours total on his birthday.

Then we had a picnic outside under the trampoline for lunch.

Jeff came home from work early so we headed over to the Kangaroo Zoo.

I didn't get any good pictures at the Kangaroo Zoo because Eli was a frantic blur the whole time we were there. If you can't tell from the picture, he had a super fun time.

The place was pretty much empty other than another little boy a little older than Eli. When we first got there, the other boy's mom kept apologizing to me because her boy was being a little bit wild around Carson. I told her that Carson had a crazy older brother so he was used to it.

Five minutes later, Eli and the other wild boy found each other. They hit it off right away. They spent a half hour running around like crazy people and literally bouncing off the walls. They were two peas in a pod and it was so funny to watch them together.

Carson didn't like the bounce house as much as we were hoping he would. He mostly liked to go behind the bounce houses and investigate the fans. Then there was the one time both of our kids were behind one of the bounce houses and it started deflating. There were kids bouncing on the deflating bounce house, and their moms understandably started freaking out and screaming at them to get off. Jeff and I gave each other a nervous look as we realized our children were probably the culprits of the mishap. Sure enough, Carson had singlehandedly taken down an entire bounce house. We all sheepishly backed away into a corner for a little while after the incident.

We made our way back home so Jeff and I could try our hands at the Plasma Car. It's safe to say we had a lot more fun with it that Eli did.

Time for cake!

Just before Eli blew out his candles, Carson made a grab at the cake. I made the quick comment, "Carson thinks this is a smash cake!"

Eli would not let that go. The whole time he was eating his piece of cake he said over and over, "Mom. Carson thought this was a smaaaaaash cake?"
Me, "Yes, he was trying to stick his hand in it."
Eli, "He tried to smash it?"
Me, "Yes."

After 10 minutes of talking about a smash cake, I looked at our entire leftover cake and realized there was no way we would ever finish it. I had been eating a bunch of junk food, and I actually wanted it gone immediately. So for Eli's final birthday celebration, we took the cake out back and made the boys' dreams come true.

Happy, Happy Birthday to my little three-year old!