Reese: 1st Food

At 5.5 months, we decided to give Reese her first taste of "real" food - rice cereal.

Here is a series of photos from her first tasting.  

See if you can guess if she liked it or not.  :-)

Now, see if you were right... ;-)

(Click here: "Reese's 1st Food" video)


She gags if I try to feed her...if Mike tries to feed her...if her daycare teachers try to feed her.

You know when she doesn't cry/gag?!?

You got it - when Colden feeds her!

(Love!!!)

(But she still doesn't like it.  She just smiles at him and then spits it back out)

Colden: 3 Years Old

Happy 3rd Birthday!

(3 days)

 (1 year)

(2 years)

(3 years)
Notice I had to turn the camera in order to fit him in the frame - my big boy!

Colden is turning into such a young man.  Not only does he now understand everything that people say, but he can:

 carry on, and even start conversations

("How was your day at work today?  Was it a big busy day?")

role-play 

(He will make up different voices for his toys and put on shows) 

negotiate 

("That's the deal" or "soon, but not today")

procrastinate 

("One more minute of snuggles" or "OK, I will - but first I have to...")

and last, but certainly not least - put us in our place when we slip up 

("Mommy, we don't talk with our mouths full. You finish eating and then you talk")

Favorite foods:

pancakes

any fruit (strawberries, blueberries, bananas, pineapple)

macaroni and cheese

seltzer

lollipops

applesauce with cinnamon (or, cinnamoomoo - as he jokingly calls it)
peanut butter and jelly

Favorite activities:

playing with his train set

climbing on the playground

listening to Bob Marley or songs from the TV show, Glee

riding his bike

swimming

playing soccer (or Blast-Off, as he calls it)

helping out in the kitchen

playing "store" with his shopping cart, purse and play food (and using rubber ducks as currency)
Legos

Favorite sayings:

soon, but not today

how was your work today? was it big busy or little busy?

do you know I love you?

Favorite color(s):
If you ask him, he will tell you - green
If you ask him to pick an item available in multiple colors, he will pick - pink


This year, when I asked Colden what he wanted his birthday party theme to be, he told me "construction trucks".  So, I made sure he got construction trucks!

We had his party at the park that is a hop, skip and a jump away from our new house.

We made tablecloths that looked like roads. Unfortunately, no one got to see them because it was too windy and we couldn't secure them well enough to the tables. I was so proud of them. So, you didn't see them at the party, but I will make sure that you see them here!  :-)

And of course I had fun running wild with the construction truck theme...so for dessert, we used trucks to serve various items. For example, here are "spare tires" served up in a dump truck:

Instead of party hats, we gave the kids construction hats, which they then decorated with stickers:

All the kids got a hat...and Mommy and Daddy :-)

The kids also got a tool apron:

We managed to scrounge up a few of the kids for a group picture:
(They are all holding onto their hats because it was so windy and the hats kept blowing away)

The kids wore their decorated construction/party hats to sing happy birthday to the birthday boy

And here is the cake
(I think this is the most fun I have had making a cake so far)

 (The dirt is made of crushed Oreos and the #3 is made of graham cracker crumbs)


There were boulders and rock falls made of Whoppers:

 Chocolate mushroom patches (who knew these existed?!?):

I even had the dump truck that was on top of the cake dumping out the graham cracker crumbs onto the #3:

Colden loved it!

I also made dump truck lollipops

Overall, I think it was a huge success! 

(Thank you to everyone who helped me pull this off)

Happy 3rd birthday, Little Man!