Last week, we celebrated a 3rd birthday in our family! I cannot believe our baby boy has turned 3…what parent doesn’t have that feeling every single birthday?!  I have so many things I could share about this cute, wild, and spunky boy of mine.  But mostly I just want to say that while I have already determined that 3 is definitely going to have it’s challenges (um, who decided it was terrible 2s? In one week, I can already determine that 2 may have been a piece of cake in comparison!), it is so so fun to watch your kid grow up!  He is so talkative now, and since that came pretty late here, we are still just really enjoying that stage, just watching him think and make believe and really verbalize what we have seen going on in his head for so long!  But seriously, those terrible 3s… we have had exactly 7 TERRIBLE meltdowns since turning 3, my favorite being when he just screamed at the top of his lungs in the doctors office because “I no want a check-up” while a docile, quiet 2 year old stood on the scale next to him.  I know I am lucky— we have only had 2 other SERIOUS public meltdowns and I just am not really sure how to deal with them!  Like everything else, I’m sure we will figure it out!

And in the meantime, Michael and I will enjoy a little bowl of ice cream tonight for having survived tonights bath meltdown. Which leads into today’s eye candy…cakes!  While it isn’t my FAVORITE dessert, my mother in law makes DARLING and delicious birthday cakes…she did this for each of her 5 as they were growing up (and still occasionally will, I hear!) and for all of the grand babies when asked, so with our love of desserts, and anything that “Ya-ya” has a hand in, we have asked her to every year- and we are so grateful she obliges!  Can’t wait to see what the next 15 bring in themes (Yaya, are you in for that many more for us?!)!

His first, styled after the beloved Otis the Tractor, followed by his first smash cake:

And his second, with a picture of the first 2 syllable real word he spontaneously said (and one of few words at that time!), right after “Ah-choo!”!

And lastly…a barn under a moon, his new favorite item to sing about, featuring a favorite song of his!