Ian Turns Three!

A third birthday is very different from previous birthdays, in large part because the birthday boy was much more aware of what was going on.  As he has become very social this year, a party with friends was the main birthday event.  It was very hard to wait until the 3pm party time.  Fortunately the library down the street was having a summer reading celebration party that kept Ian entertained for the morning.  He especially liked the clown who made him a balloon airplane and the face painting.  We waited and waited in line for face painting and he watched as older kids requested various things and got their faces painted.  Here he is playing with his airplane while waiting:

I had no idea how Ian would react when it was his turn and it seems quite possible that he would not actually want anyone to paint his face.  But this boy is growing up faster than we can keep up with, and he confidently hopped up in the chair and said he wanted to be a pirate (this came as a surprise to me since I didn’t even know he was aware of pirates!).  He was very cooperative:

And here he is, Ian the Pirate!:

And not only does he know what a pirate is, he also seems to know how they act (though he has since expressed reservations about pirates because they are mean which is not nice).  Where did my baby boy go?:

Post-library party, it was time to start preparations for Ian’s party.  He took his job preparing favor bags (which he called “flavor” bags) very seriously.  I was impressed that his concentration and attention to detail held up for all dozen bags.  He selected a subset of crayons that he wanted to use once and only once on each bag.  We devised a system of two lines of crayons so he could keep track of this.  After crayons, each bag got several carefully placed stickers, and then was filled with a notebook, set of colored pencils, and sheet of stickers.  Here he is doing his work:

Ian preparing his “flavor bags”.

We opted several months ago to have Ian’s party at the Little Gym. (This turned out to be a great decision, especially because Daddy was on his way home from Dubai at the time – the Little Gym made it so easy for me to host this party I kind of felt guilty – aren’t parents supposed to suffer to make their children’s birthday parties possible?).  We had suffered a long series of  100 degree days in the preceding weeks and being able to run and bounce around in the air conditioning was fun for the kids.  Here they are waiting for the bouncy pirate ship to inflate:

Waiting to bounce!

And his happy birthday song:

Happy birthday Ian! (and Madeline says “me too!” ; ) )

Happy birthday Ian!