Quinn Turns 3!

Q is officially 3 years old! This year we decided to just do fun stuff he'd like on his birthday, rather than a party. In the past few weeks whenever we'd ask Q what he wanted for his birthday he'd list the following: Balloons, Party hats, decorations, cake with candles, and presents. So I let him pick out a few decorations of his own while we were at Target one day. They were, of course, all Thomas the Train crap. As for cake, he picked out strawberry. I picked up a few things as well and we were all set.

The night before his birthday I hung up streamers, balloons and birthday signs. Shawn made a regular round cake. BUT. He made a bridge with train tracks using graham crackers, and I bought a new Thomas train that we set on top. I re-wrapped a couple presents we held back at Christmas and we were ready to go. (I don't need to disclaimer or apologize for all the crappy cell phone pictures anymore, do I? )

I spy: party hats, balloons, decorations & a present.

Birthday Sign, from his first birthday (made by Sam)

Throw a few balloons on the floor, and you're good.

He woke up on his birthday and Shawn intercepted him before he could go to the living room. Basically to give me a minute to drag my tired ass out of bed.  We walked with him down the hall and as soon as he saw the decorations, he stopped and did this thing he does when he's overly excited/overwhelmed. He smiled, hid his face in his hand and wouldn't go any further. SO cute.

Seeing his birthday sign

Seeing his Thomas Cake

He does this with his arms when he's really happy/excited

 \

Birthday donut!

So after breakfast we got the boys ready to go to WiggleWorks. Shawn had had the idea to take Q to one of those bounce house places. But I knew that Archer wasn't quite big enough to navigate around that kind of place, but would for sure want to play. Anyway, I found WiggleWorks through the Parent Map website and it looked perfect. Geared more towards younger guys with all soft play equipment ANNNND a balloon room.

In the vortex of the balloon room

I just love his face in this one

Chillin

After Wiggleworks we picked up a pizza and headed home for lunch and birthday cake.

After cake we had quite time (no nap for this boy) then played outside for awhile. Then, finally, it was present time.

Clearance Xmas themed Disney match game?!

 And I believe that was it for the day. I think it was good to just focus on him and not deal with a big party (although, I really do love having parties, so I don't know that this will be the deal every year.) He for sure had fun and it was nice to keep it low key and not spend a ton of money, ha! So, Happy Birthday Little guy! I love you so much. Even though I had to just stop writing this post to go change your disgusting diaper, only to discover you'd found a rouge crayon (for like, the 4th time in the last week) and drew all over the floor and wall. Again. And you're now sitting in time out sighing that big sigh that you do, while I try not to laugh. You're funny, silly, & sweet. You give the best hugs and smooches. I love the songs you sing, especially when you make up your own words to other tunes (Quinney the Pooh might be my favorite.) Here's to another fun year with you! (And please, go easy on us. I've heard about age three and I'm scared.)

Recap: Archer Oliver One Year Old!

(I somehow forgot I had this post almost all ready to go and be posted on Archer's actual birthday, but never finished and hit 'publish'. Whoops! So pretend it's the beginning of December will ya?)

Please excuse the sobbing. I'm fine with my little baby turning one. It's totally cool.

The only somewhat decent picture I got on his birthday, and it's a little bit of a stinkeye

So what's new with Archer? Well he's walking like a mad thing. He still has this stiff legged walk that is just hilarious. The unfortunate thing about his walking is he really likes to get going fast. Which is funny, but dangerous since he's still a bit wobbly.



Trying to get in on Q's food action. (Please ignore my kitchen. This is mid-party prep)

Feeding him is apparently akin to stabbing him with hot pokers, cause home boy won't let me do it anymore. He must feed himself. WHATEVER BIG KID. He currently loves him some pasta (I just do whole wheat elbow noodles with a bit of sauce. Finally someone will eat the whole wheat pasta I buy). He will eat cheese forever if I let him. Clearly Shawn's son after all. He loves yogurt too and would put down a whole container in about 2 seconds I think.

We're still breastfeeding in the morning & before bed, but I ditched the pump. I couldn't keep spending all my breaks at work pumping and coming away with like, 2 oz for the whole day. Forget that noise. Done. Still trying to decide if I'll completely wean him off the boob. I want to keep going but I am also kinda over it.

I think he's probably in 12 month clothes. Except the thing is? I can't find any of Q's 12 month stuff. It all seems to go from 9 mo to 18 mo. Huh.


Oh you think you're just such a big kid now? And you can open doors and walk away from me?!

The clingy-ness has relented a bit. I think his new found independence with walking has helped with that.
He is hitting the stubborned phase full on. He has quite the piercing whine when he doesn't get what he wants. Fun!


"Do NOT take this bag of dinner rolls I stole out of the pantry away from me, or I will cut a bitch. By which I mean you."

He gives sloppy open-mouth kisses, hugs my legs sometimes, leans his forehead against mine when I ask for a kiss sometimes (instead of the open mouth kiss), he claps, shakes his head 'no' and has started bouncing/dancing sometimes to music. Basically he's sweet and cuddly and I love the crap out of him.

You and I both know I won't manage to get an actual birthday party recap post up. So here are some pictures I managed to get with my phone.




 First the bday boy in his Cat in the Hat shirt and Bday crown (Q had a matching shirt, but I'm pretty sure I only have a picture of his back)

Hard to believe, but he kept this on all day.

Next we have some of the food. I tried to do Dr. Seuss themed food, but had trouble comimg up with things besides desert. Thanks PINTEREST for nothing. Well, I did get a couple of ideas.

My version of green eggs and ham. There were green deviled eggs too, but I don't have a picture.

Not Dr Seuss themed, but tasty and cute

Hop on Pop is my favorite

Cat in the Hat cake Shawn made!!



Yink Pink Ink Drink was just pink lemonade from frozen concentrate. Easy Peasy.

 There were some decorations. Mostly balloons & Dr Seuss books strewn around. Don't really have any decent pictures. I was pretty bad at getting pictures once people arrived. So no party guests either. And once again we failed to get any pictures of me or Shawn with the birthday boy. Lame. I do have a couple more cute ones of Archer though:

Cake you say? Hmmmm

You can't really beat an adorable baby in a crown, can ya?! Happy, Happy Birthday my sweet, squishy boy!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today would have been be dad's 78th Birthday.

 

Happy Birthday Dad!! We miss you!!

 

Q Turns One!

Since the main purpose of all of this is to help me remember things, I thought I'd do a recap of my best little man's first birthday. It's already been almost 4 months, so I honestly probably forgot half of the day at this point. But here we go. First we had to decide what kind of celebration to have. Little family get together? Big bad-ass blowout?  Since he'd have no idea what was going on, and would never remember it, we decided (I decided; Shawn's kinda "meh" about b-days) to go somewhere in the middle of the two.  Even with just a couple of people in attendance our apartment would be too small, so I had to figure out where this whole thing would take place. We live in Washington, and it was April, so outdoors was out of the question. And of course the cabana at our apartment was in the midst of construction. So turned to the fine folks at Alfy's Pizza. My baby shower was there and it worked great. Plus- FREE! His first birthday was on a Saturday, so that worked well.  Next was trying to figure out a "theme."  This stressed me out. I looked at way to many pictures of perfect, adorable parties before realizing if nothing else I was just too lazy to manage something so nice. Then Target came to the rescue in the form of a collection of Monster Plates & napkins. Done!
Other than deciding to use some of his stuffed animals as decoration, there wasn't much more to the theme.
Then it was time to decide on a cake. Shawn came up with the brilliant idea of making a cake in the shape of a Q. We bought a huge round cake pan, and Shawn cut a circle out of the middle and used that piece to create the "kickstand' of the letter. It was AWESOME!  Meanwhile I made 'Q' & '1' sugar cookies, and cupcakes to make sure we had enough sugar to put everyone into comas.

Also made for the occasion- A poster board displaying a pic of the little man from every month. I turned out pretty good.

However, this banner made by a friend was so freakin' awesome! Unfortunately this is the best picture I got:

On the day of I know I got all stressed out an annoyed trying to get everything set up in the few minutes we had to get ready before people. I might have gotten testy and impatient with people, which isn't really like me. I'm blaming the pregnancy for that. Also that I got a phone call in the middle of all of this from my mom to let me know she wouldn't make it in time for the party. I'm not even going to get into how annoyed and upset I was by that.

So people arrived. There was chatting and ooh-ing and awh-ing over my super adorable kid.
There was Pizza for the very first time!

Then it was CAKE TIME!This kid dove into that cake like he knew what was what. No worries out of him about trying a new food!

Nothing left but crumbs.

There wasn't really time for presents (And we'd actually asked people not to bring any, so there weren't a lot anyway).  We just tried to visit with everyone before time was up.


After the pizza party we headed on home to wait for my mom & sister to finally arrive and then open presents. I knew he wouldn't understand what was going on, but I thought he'd at least be interested in ripping open gifts. Nope. Just wanted to run around the house dragging a dozen balloons behind him and tripping all over the place.

The person that did want to open presents, so bad he could hardly stand it was my 5 yr old nephew. He was very interested in "helping", ha!
More Balloon madness:

And to end the day,an attempt at a few family pictures (We're holding the birthday card we gave him, though I don't know why since you can't really see it)