3 Years Old

Our sweet Noah turned 3 years old last Wednesday. We had his three year pictures done and Joanna did a fantastic job (as usual). This is one of the pictures from that session.

Now! As for Noah's actual birthday - we had a great day. Mark took vacation days Wednesday-Friday, so he was even home on Noah's birthday. After a pancake breakfast what better way is there to start a birthday than a gander at a fish tank? Nope, we didn't take him to the aquarium...we went to the doctor for his 3 year check-up. Fun, huh?

Actually it was pretty fun. Noah knew that he wasn't getting any shots this time, so he was very cooperative. He stood right up against the wall to get his height measured (35.5 inches - 10th percentile), and stood still on the scale to get his weight (32 pounds - 50th percentile). He did everything the doctor asked - say "aaah", look at this light, etc. The doctor said he looks healthy as can be, and hey - Noah got a sucker & sticker, so we all left with smiles.

For lunch we ate at McDonalds (no pictures from that though). Noah got a nuggets Happy Meal with lemonade & fries. His toy was a little electronic soccer game. Noah excitedly began taking it around to other kids in the play-place, showing off his new toy. Pretty soon all of the boys in the play area started running back to their moms to retrieve their various sports games, and we started hearing, "Mine is a tennis game...Mine is a basketball game" and so on. It was pretty cute to watch the little pow-wow that Noah started. And, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the occasional girl that would pipe in "I got a crown..." (partially because the cheesy looking tiaras weren't half as cool as the boys' electronic sports games, and partially because the boys weren't paying any attention to the girls' attempts to include themselves in this social circle). In any case, both Noah and Lincoln had a great time playing around on the play-place (yes, even Lincoln climbed around in the tubes!) and Noah got a hot-fudge Sunday before we left. Then it was off to naps before we headed up to see my parents!

Now, since Mark was taking vacation time we wanted to do something fun...and since I'm always a sucker for celebrating birthdays right on the actual day, we tried to think of something fun to do the evening of Noah's birthday. We already had a birthday party planned for him the following Saturday (yesterday), so we decided that we'd just do something low key with my family. We met up at my parents house for pizza and then headed over to Chuck E Cheese's to use up leftover tokens that we had from last time we were there (when I had a coupon for 100 tokens for $10!). We got to my parents' house though and my mom had the table all set with cute cars plates & even a Lightning McQueen place mat for the birthday boy. Since we hadn't brought a change of clothes for the boys it was off with their shirts, and then we all gobbled down our pizza & salad! Here's a picture of Noah doing his recently acquired cheeser. It's a bit forced, and yes he practically closes his eyes, but I'm not about to complain or correct him when he's actually willing to pose for a picture!

My mom even made yummy cupcakes! So, we sang happy birthday to Noah & watched him blow out the candles. It was actually kind of fun to have a "practice run" before his party. He sang right along with us! And, when he blew out the candles the smoke actually scared him & he started stumbling backwards to get away from it until we showed him that it was safe. Such a cutie. Here's a short clip of him singing Happy Birthday (to himself)! :)


And blowing out the candles...

And the cupcakes were delicious. Thanks, Mom/Grandma!

Here's Lincoln excited to chow down on his cupcake before we've even cleaned up the pizza off of his face :)

I wanted Noah to be able to open a gift or two on his actual birthday, so we wrapped a couple up and brought them with us. He opened them at Chuck E. Cheese. This one was a barrel of monkeys (from Lincoln) like the old school ones on Toy Story. Do you think he liked them? I'll let you be the judge...

This was a little paint set that came with a canvas (that has a Buzz Lightyear watermarked on it) for him to paint. He was disappointed that we weren't going to open it to paint right then, but he got over that pretty quickly.

His last present was a nerf bow & arrow set with Buzz Lightyear on it (yes, I've caved-in to his Buzz obsession). He thought that was pretty cool. Then it was off to the car with the toys so we could use up our tokens!

For the most part Noah liked being pretty independent playing games or riding rides (choosing them & doing them himself), but here was one of the games that he actually played with somebody. He and Mark played this car racing game together & it was pretty cute. One thing that my mom & I noticed about Noah throughout the night was that he was interested in seeing how each of the games worked. After he'd finish a game he'd walk around it to look at where the balls came from, where the game was plugged in, etc. And once his question seemed satisfied then he was off to the next game...

By far Noah's favorite ride this time was this horseriding game. He would hold the reigns and look at the TV game screen straight ahead while steering his horse. The horse would "gallop" up and down, turn, and could even do a little jump. He was a little nervous riding it the last time we were there - not this time! He rode it all by himself and loved it. Here he is striking a pose by his horse. Isn't he looking so grown up?

Once we were ready to go we fed all of our tickets to the ticket muncher (that counts your tickets for you) and we headed to the prize counter to choose some cheap toys and candy. While I was going over the different combinations of candies & plastic toys that Noah could get for 175 tickets - Noah got his eye on this pirate hook for 200 tickets. His uncle Josh was kind enought to donate 25 of his own tickets so that Noah could get his pirate hook and Noah was really excited. We told him he could put it on when he got in his car seat. Once we opened it we found that it came with a "hat" and eye patch too, so here is Noah with his new pirate garb. Thanks for those tickets, Josh! We had a great time and I think Noah had a pretty good 3rd birthday. We love you, little guy.

Lastly, after getting the boys in bed I went over to my friend Claire's house to start figuring out the design for Noah's birthday cake that we were making together for his party. When I got home I saw a piece of plastic sticking out from underneath some leaves at the base of our porch. I thought it was some garbage that had gotten kicked partially under the wet leaves to the side of our porch, so I picked it up to throw away. I was quite shocked to see that it was this small baggie with a white substance and the corner of 100 dollar bill peeking out. It was dark, I was caught off guard, and I wasn't sure what to think. I wondered if it was drugs that had accidentally gotten dropped by someone...then I wondered who (that deals drugs) would have been on our porch...would they come back to try to find it...would they try to break in...should I call the police...should I try to smell this substance, or could it be harmful to smell or touch? I ended up calling Claire & luckily she had found the same thing on her driveway earlier that day. She initially thought it was a bag of drugs too until she looked closely at the bill and noticed that it didn't look right. She opened the bag and found out that it was money that had been photocopied on one side and had an advertisement on the inside for a work-from-home job. Lame! I seriously almost called the cops and made them waste their time coming to my house to look at a bag of sand and a job advertisement. I felt dumb at first, and then decided that the people who distributed these were the ones who are lame. All I can say is that I'm glad Claire answered her cell phone at 12:15 AM when I called! So, that's how I ended Noah's birthday. The story has nothing to do with him, but for some reason I wanted to tell it anyway. It was just so wierd.

Well, I'll be posting a big ol' post from Noah's birthday party soon. For now though I need to get to bed. I haven't been to bed before 1:00-1:30 AM for four nights in a row now. So! Nighty-night!