Jurassic Birthday

Patrick turned 3 today! I've been excited for this party ever since I bought the supplies back in November! We invited three friends, one for each year (good idea, Katie!), so it was pretty manageable and fun rather than hectic and overwhelming. Also, my friend Rebecca stayed to help and she was diligent in taking photos of everything (thanks, Rebecca!) while I herded kids from activity to activity. First we made dinosaur puppets from lunch bags. I was pretty excited about this and thought the kids would totally be munching each other with their "dinosaurs" after they made them, but they just had fun decorating. They left their creations behind to do the next activity, "Dinosaur Freeze" - we listened to music while we wore dinosaur hats and stomped and roared like dinosaurs, but when the music stopped everyone had to "freeze" or they were out. Well, sometimes the kids played with toys rather than roaring and stomping. Then we did a "dino hunt," where I hid some plush dinosaurs in the basement and the kids had to find them, then got to keep them. After we found the dinosaurs twice we played "pin the horn in the triceratops" which everyone had a great time doing, though they definitely only wanted to do it once! After pinning their horn each kid ran back to the toy they were playing with, maybe thinking the others would steal it while they were busy! I think we'll play it again when daddy gets home tonight, I did an excellent job freehand copying that triceratops head... ALL THAT only took HALF an HOUR. I was really glad I had planned LOTS of activities! Finally we had lunch: brontosaurus PB&J's with dinosaur fruit snacks, plus juice. Instead of a cake I cut out stegosaurus and T-Rex brownies and put candles in them. Lunch took the most time and was a nice quite break while everyone ate their fruit snacks and juice. Everyone almost completely ignored their brontosaurus sanwiches except Nick! He helped himselves to everyone else's leftovers, though, so no dinos went to waste. Then the kids sang Happy Birthday and helped Patrick blow out the candles and we finally got to open presents. The rest of the party was just free play; though I did print coloring sheets, only Patrick was interested in them. I guess not everyone is CRAAAAZY about dinosaurs like Patrick is :)

In spite of his new "big boy" age he spent most of the morning throwing mini-tantrums when I said he couldn't have/do something that we would be having/doing at his party. "No, you can't have 3 packs of dinsaur fruit snacks, they're for lunch." "No, you can't have all the dinosaur skeletons, they're for the gift bags." "No, you can't have any more brownies, it's 8 in the morning!" I know right now he's a year older, but at the moment he's only a day older than yesterday, so of COURSE he's the same as yesterday! But it seems like today we should be getting somewhere - getting less dramatic, getting more mature and not hitting/pushing/stealing toys, getting better at listening to and following directions, all that good stuff. Hopefully we'll get there even more this year, it's nice to have a kid who's growing up! Happy Birthday, big guy!