Harrison's Birthday

Harrison had a great third birthday. Here's a quick recap:

We went to Chuck E Cheese in the morning and were the first people there. Harrison repeatedly called the Chuck E Cheese mouse, "Mickey Mouse"; after the fifth time correcting him, I let it slide. Harrison and Ellie loved all the rides and I loved that they only cost me $.10 instead of $1.50 like the mall ones do. Harrison was so excited he would start to play a game and before it finished, he would be off to another one. He climbed on the skee ball track to put the balls in (and he only put them in the 10,000 point slots to boot. If you're going to cheat, at least cheat big and go for the 100,000 spots). When I announced that it was time to go, Harrison finally got up the courage to climb past the second step in the big climbing maze thing. Josh finally coaxed him out after 20+ minutes. I hate those things only because the parents have no real way to get the kids out. So unless you have one of those overly obedient children (which I don't), you're stuck negotiating with them through plastic bubble windows until they finally get bored and come out. We burned through 50+ tokens in an hour and a half and had to eventually drag Harrison out of there.

The kids took good naps and then we made our second train cake of the day. Yep, that right. As I was putting the first cake in the oven, I realized that I forgot to grease the pan. Apparently that is a vital step, especially when using using an intricate pan (from this experience I learned that I shouldn't bake before 8am because my brain isn't completely functioning). The second train cake turned out fine and it was fun to decorate.

Harrison couldn't make up his mind on his birthday theme. While we were at the party store picking plates and other party supplies, he wanted it all. A Mickey Mouse, Bob the Builder, Curious George, Diego, Thomas the Train, and on and on party (whoa, I just realized how affected we are by cartoons and commercialism after looking at that list). We finally settled on Curious George supplies. On Monday, he said he wanted Bob the Builder balloons so against my innate theme-matchy personalty, I broke down and got him Bob (but threw in a Curious George balloon so that I wouldn't have a breakdown). Mix those with the train cake and I can safely say Harrison had the best Curious George/Bob the Builder/Train birthday ever.

Harrison opened his presents after naptime, a process which took nearly two hours. He recieved some new clothes (and underwear! now if only he would use them), toy food, recycling truck (Uncle Justin would be proud), Geotrax train stuff, finger paints, doctor kit, vtech camera, matchbox cars and a matchbox playmat, Don't Break the Ice game, and several other things.

He wanted to take pictures of his cake so he took several before we could sing and eat. He blew out three of the candles on the first try and the remaining ones the second time around. He did a great job of covering his face with blue frosting.

So that's how we spent New Year's Day this year (well, all this in addition to cursing our upstairs neighbors who decided to bring the party home from the bar at 1am and continued with their LOUD, bass heavy music and yelling until 3am).