Our family is growing in many ways... Growing in numbers, knowledge, parenting skills, growing in love, in our faith, growing our culinary skills (if you can call it that), growing without gluten (some of us), growing green...........

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

My little baby is THREE

And this happened three months ago. I'm just getting around to posting about it. Mom of the year over here, folks! Or maybe I could just say I've been so busy being a great mom I had no time to write a blog post about his birthday. Hmm... ;)

We decided last Christmas what Aiden's birthday theme would be. And then crossed our fingers and hoped he would like it by the time August rolled around! We found some super-fabulous deals on Thomas the Train collections (thanks to my friend over at Western Wake Wallet Savers - great site for you local folks to check out!). Aiden's Christmas was already taken care of, so we got a bunch of train sets to put aside for his birthday.


When August 6th came, he was all for a Thomas birthday, so all worked out well in the end! We usually throw one big party, but this year we divided it up into two "playdate" parties. I'm not sure which we would prefer - two parties is a lot of work, even when they're laid back. But we don't really have the space for everyone to come to just one. (August is not a great month to plan an outdoor party here in North Carolina, either...) Regardless, we still had a great time. We kept things simple. Snacks, cupcakes, and homemade ice cream. The cupcakes were all gluten-free, of course. Nobody complained (at least, not to me). ;) And everyone had a blast playing with the new Thomas sets. We let Aiden open his gifts from us the day before so that we could set up the train tracks. Then we hoped it was a good idea and that everyone would share well instead of fight over all the train pieces. It's a tough age for sharing, so we were kind of taking a risk. But we were very pleasantly surprised at just how well it went over! It was the calmest party ever - surpassing our expectations by far. Yay!

Aiden with his new Thomas sets from Mom and Dad! (Then there were more that
others gave him, too! Lucky boy!)
We get Aiden a book each year and have guests sign it at the party. This year, it
was a Thomas book, of course. This is a great collection of the first original stories
and we love that it will last a long time and is a great reminder of how loved this
little guy is, thanks to all the notes from friends that came to his party!
You come to a party at our house, you get lots of fresh, healthy, colorful (and
delicious!) food! :) Yummy!
The Three Musketeers! Aiden and two of his best buddies playing trains together at the party.
Ryan's mom, Sharon, and David came to celebrate Aiden!
One great thing about celebrating was that Ryan's mom got to be here to celebrate with us! It's wonderful having family around. We really miss being closer to all of our families back in KY and WV. The not-so-great (well, pretty awful) thing was that Ryan's dad and step-mom planned on coming but got into a bad car accident shortly after they got on the road. The car was totaled and they were injured (but are doing better now!). Luckily, they were still near their home, so they didn't have to worry about being at a hospital in a different city. Of course, we felt horrible this happened. We're so glad they are ok and doing much better now! 



It's crazy that this kid is THREE! He's talking in complete sentences and blowing us away with his memory and smarty-pants knowledge all the time. He's become quite the daddy's boy lately. I love how excited he gets when he hears his Daddy turning the door knob as he's about to come into the house at the end of the day. He then bombards Daddy with "Come play with me!!" He's also going through a phase where he doesn't really want to play alone anymore but wants us doing something with him constantly (not like him). His favorite things these days are puzzles (you should see this kid put together a 48-pc puzzle in no time!), dinosaurs, Berenstain Bears and Fraggle Rock books (yes, really!), and, of course, Thomas. And he's sure to let us know all the time that he is not little anymore, he is BIG.

He's still a rather small guy, but we finally got some weight on him, so now he's a whopping (ha) 32 pounds and comes in at about 3 feet tall. I just have to say, last year this time, he was at the 25th %tile for his weight and just over that for his height. At this point, he is at the 50th %tile for both. Once we took this child off gluten, he really started growing big time! We noticed it almost immediately (putting on a whole pound very shortly after going off gluten was easy to notice!). It's kind of crazy looking at this growth charts, seeing how big he was and the drops he went through. Then suddenly he jumps way up after these last six months or so! Off topic, but...updating his charts after his birthday reassured us we were on the right track with this gluten-thing (this is just one example).

Wait till you hear about the birthday gift HE gave to us, too. Coming up in one of the next posts.

Feel free to see the rest of his birthday pictures here!
2011 August Aiden Bday

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