Three!

Colin turned 3 on Tuesday.  I woke up at 6:00 that day, and as I was getting ready that morning, I thought about that morning 3 years ago.  After lots of pushing with no luck, they wheeled me back to the OR and at 6:04am, Colin officially joined our world.  It's hard to fathom that it has already been three years and that it has only been three years.

Our spunky little guy knows some of his numbers (still struggling with 7 and 8), all of his letters and the sounds that they make, how to spell his name and some of his friends' (his memory is unbelievable sometimes), loves to look at flashcards and read books, and play with cars/trucks/trains/tractors/anything that moves.  He's a gross motor kid: running, jumping, crashing, crawling, climbing, spinning, throwing, anything.  He's a good eater for a 3-year-old, and he eats any fruit but melon (gets that honestly...I hate melon, and we never have it in the house), lots of veggies, meats, bread, dairy, sweets (especially popsicles lately), and loves milk.  We have conditioned him to dislike juice unintentionally.  We have purposely avoided having him drink juice, and he knows he isn't supposed to have it at daycare.  At his party today, my mom offered him some Capri Sun, and he took a drink and said, "I don't like it."  He sleeps well, and we're looking at having him start transitioning to a bed in the next week or so.  I'm really unsure of what to expect from this transition, as he typically does calisthenics in bed before falling asleep.

For his actual birthday, we went and let him pick out any donut he wanted (chocolate with chocolate icing).  I had to go to an 8am lecture, and I was sad to not spend his birthday with him.  He took treats to share with his friends at daycare, and we picked him up fairly early from daycare.  He opened a few presents and FaceTimed with family members.  Today was his actual party.  We went to a place called Monkey Joe's which had lots of inflatable bouncy houses/slides etc.  He spent the first hour sobbing because he didn't want to go in the inflatables because it was "too loud."  After some major bribery, he finally went in and had a blast (which we knew he would).  Then we came back to our house for lunch, food, and gifts.  We did a Cars-themed party, and I went a little overboard with Pinterest.

 My favorite part is the birthday signs.

 We accidentally cracked the cake a little bit when we tried to fit into our refrigerator.  The car covered most of the crack.

 Little Luke is not so little anymore.

 Don't let the cheese fool you.  This was after about 50 minutes of crying about not wanting to get into the inflatables.

 And then he had a blast jumping.

 Karate chopping monkeys.

Playing with his buddy Jude.  (Jude's mom and I teach together, and he's just 1 month younger than Colin).

 As we sang Happy Birthday to him.

 Modeling his new clothes.

 Every present he opened was followed by, "Casie can you open this for me?" before he immediately moved on to the next one.

 Claire Bear snuck in some snuggles with Grandma

And Kaitlyn snuck in some snuggles with Claire. As did Hailey, but I'm missing pictures of that.

It was a good day.  We had a TON of food leftover, and we're all pretty exhausted.  I'm very thankful it's a 3 day weekend.  Well, I didn't go in on Friday, so I guess I had a 4-day weekend.  Ready for some downtime tomorrow!