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!) |
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! |
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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