Aiden's 4th

Aiden Monkey turned 4 on Tuesday, the 17th. He had preschool that day so Monday evening I whipped up some cupcakes for him to bring along. He's into superheroes so we got these stickers off Amazon and made cupcake picks out of them. I think they turned out pretty cute!

We were in kind of a rush to get to preschool, but I had to quickly get a shot of Aiden. He was struggling to hold all of those cupcakes! And it was super sunny ;)

The birthday sign was out for him at preschool :)

After preschool he got to go off with Janie and Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles to McDonald's for lunch, one of his favorite things to do with them.

That evening we had my parents and Tanis over (Kent had a Church obligation) to watch him open gifts and for cupcakes (we had extra from preschool).

That Saturday we rented a bounce house for Aiden's birthday party. We had ordered an Avengers bounce house, but they got to us and realized someone hadn't turned in the Avengers banner so they upgraded us to the bounce house combo with a slide for free! It ended up being great! They set it up a few hours before the party (it pretty much took up our whole backyard) and Aiden got right to jumping! Janie was skeptical at first.

She got the hang of it :)

Aiden had specifically wanted an Iron Man party, but we couldn't really find just Iron Man, so we did Avengers/general superhero decor. Thank goodness for Party City and Target! I kept things really simple this year! I also specifically planned for the party to start at 1 with the hopes that the kids would have eaten lunch already. So I didn't have to worry about feeding them, but we did have some snacks available and cake, of course.

I found these Jello cup ideas on Pinterest. Some had blue/red Jello (Captain America) and others yellow/red Jello (Iron Man).

Captain America shield cake. Thank you Pinterest.

Gift table.

I was pretty stinking happy that this year Aiden was old enough to invite his friends and JUST his friends, no parents. I mean if they had wanted to stay we would have let them, of course, but I was happy they all just dropped off their kids. In previous years it honestly kind of stressed me out having to "entertain" the children as well as the parents. We didn't even have our parents come until the end of the party!

I had Aiden come up with the invite list - his best buddy, Lucas, and then some friends from preschool and Sunbeams at Church. We invited 10 kids and only had 4 make it, so small turn out. But I understand, Saturdays are crazy, plus it was the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Aiden didn't even notice though. The first guest, Maelee, the only girl, came and they immediately ran out to jump and Aiden was as happy as can be the rest of the party :)

Trent was awesome to jump and play with all of the kids :)

Each kid got a superhero mask :)

The party was a success! Easy (bounce house, store bought decorations), no lunch, and no parents..haha. Aiden is still talking about his party and the bounce house. I bet we end up doing many more bounce house parties in the future ;)

We were all kind of pooped after the party. Not Janie though. She climbed on the table and started playing with the Jello. Cheez-its in the Jello (they were Avengers Cheez-its ;)). 

We went to Aiden's 4 year appointment as well, so hopefully I'll get that post up next.

3 Year Stats

So man, I'm finally getting around to posting Aiden's 3 year stats.  We went to his appt. on the 20th and he weighed in at 30.6 pounds (38th percentile).  He is measuring right at about 3 feet (36.5 inches), which is in the 33rd percentile.  It was so interesting, our pediatrician says that if he stays on this growth curve, he'll probably end up being about 5'10''.  That does seem accurate because Trent is just under 5'11", but, for Aiden's sake, we're hoping he ends up a little taller ;)  It will be so crazy to see what ends up happening in the next 15ish years!

Aiden actually didn't have to get any shots, until our pediatrician strongly encouraged flu shots for both kids.  I don't normally bother with flu shots, but she said it would really be a good idea this year since Janie's just a baby.  I guess a lot of babies that get the flu end up in the hospital :(  So once our doctor left, I had to break the news to Aiden before the nurse came back in to give it.  He was very nervous, but I kept reminding him of a book we've been reading, and Daniel Tiger, who both get shots.  He did great.  I think it helped that Janie had to get one too ;)  And that they gave him a sucker afterward.

I had him show off his bandaid proof before he got in the bath that night.

• It is seriously amazing how well Aiden speaks.  I think it really floors people.  So many kids his age are not speaking nearly as much, or as well, as he does.  Here's a little video I got of him the night before his birthday :)

• I mentioned in his birthday post that he'd memorized a whole book that we got from the library, so we ended up buying it for his birthday.  We took it up to Utah for Thanksgiving because I was hoping he'd show off his skills for everyone. He can be pretty shy so I didn't know if he'd actually do it, but he totally did!  And it wasn't just my sisters around, a bunch of my cousins were there as well.  They were all dying!  They all cheered when he was done and you could tell he was so proud :)  I really need to get a good video of it.  He's such a little smartie!

• So I hate to even write this one because Aiden's actually had a really good week, but it seems like everyone had always told me "it's not the terrible twos, it's the terrible THREES."  And we can now attest to that.  Seriously, it was a like a week before his birthday that the tantrums started :/ He probably only averages about one good tantrum a day, but like I said, this last week it was even less than that.  He really is still the sweetest little guy most to the time :)

• Likewise, he is also having a terrible time sharing lately.  He watches Janie like a hawk and won't let her touch any. of. his. stuff.  Lots of times though, he's really good about hurrying to grab one of her toys and will give that to her instead.  Lately he also seems to get kind of jealous when we're giving Janie attention, particularly if Daddy is.  Trent will make Janie do all of kinds of funny things, like dance, and then Aiden will say, "My turn, my turn" and will get pretty upset if Trent doesn't react quick enough..haha.

• Probably factoring into the last two bullets, Aiden has kind of phased out of taking naps.  I still try to encourage him to take one every day - we'll do our typical routine of reading a few books and then he'll lie down and I always hope he'll fall asleep, but usually after about 5 minutes he'll come sneaking out and find me..haha.

• We got him all potty trained during the day in August.  He is doing awesome and never has accidents. We're still working on bedtime though.  We always put him in a diaper.  He goes through phases and sometimes he'll have a week or two where he'll consistently wake up dry, but then other weeks he'll wake up completely saturated.  So if anyone has any tricks, send them my way ;)

• Over the last year he'll either avidly try to avoid the camera OR he'll cheese it up.  A normal smile is hard to come by..ha.  Lately he's been cheesin' it ;)

This was from my birthday :)

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I can't think of much else.  And I don't really have any pictures of Aiden that I haven't already posted. But here are some recent pics of him sleeping.  You know how much I love those ;)

• These pics actually made me think of another point!  A few months ago Aiden made the connection that we use pillows and that he didn't have one.  He kept trying to take Trent's to his bed, so Trent found him his own.  You'll notice him lying on the pillow in two of the pictures, but sometimes he still pushes it to the side.

Propped way up there ;)

Aiden is 3!

Aiden Monkey turned 3 on Monday!  We celebrated his birthday over the course of two days - Saturday and Monday.  This year we just kept it simple and had our families join us and it was so nice. Saturday we went to the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale and it was so great.  We will definitely be going back! Admission is free and then you just purchase tickets if you want to go on one of the 3 rides - the antique carousel or two different trains.

Aiden decided he wanted to ride the carousel first and was adamant they sit in the hand cart instead of on the horses..haha.

Aiden spotted my mom and Amber entering the park :)

We got Miss Janie fed and then we all went on the bigger train ride.

The group - Mom was taking the picture and Kent seems to be hiding ;)

There was a little museum and then you could tour this train.  The car at the end (the Roald Amundsen Pullman Car) is best known for its presidential travel.  It was actually used by Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower!

I thought Aiden would be excited to tour the train, so we didn't spend too much time in the museum before we went out to the train.  But I was wrong!  We had made it about halfway through (there were just 3 or 4 train cars so it wasn't huge or anything) when Aiden had a little freak out and insisted we turn around!  I don't know what happened!  Nonetheless, he was happy when we made it back inside the museum ;)

We all suspected the little freak out may be hunger related so we decided to have some lunch next.

They have two awesome play areas at the park and Aiden was in heaven.  Seriously, we may just go back with a picnic sometime and play on the playgrounds!

Aiden's at the top of the slide here.

We still had some tickets, so Aiden went on the train again with Trent and Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles.

Here they come ;)

Back to the train station.

Miss Janie may have played with Aiden's Mater while he was on the train.  He spotted it right away and took it back right when he got back ;)

Then we headed over to check out the Model Railroad Building.

It was so neat to see all of the little model railroads and trains.  I love anything miniature and it was amazing to see all of the detail they put into everything!

Everything was Janie sized ;)

Some of the trains had characters riding on them.  This one had Spiderman :)

Lastly, I went on the kiddie train ride with Aiden.

I felt a little silly on it :)

As I said before, we had such a great time and will definitely be back. And the weather was perfect.  It was a great day!

Monday I tried to really spoil Aiden :)

He didn't wake up until 9 and then we went out for donuts.  I didn't even change him into clothes, we just went in his jammies ;)  We went to Bosa's Donuts just down the road and Aiden picked out this donut with chocolate frosting and sprinkles :)

Picture isn't great b/c I took it with my ancient phone.

Sunday night Trent and I were talking about meeting for lunch in Tempe.  One of the first things Aiden said when he woke up was how he wanted to go to slides and have chicken nuggets and fries, so I thought we could meet Trent at Chick-fil-a, but it turns out the one near him w/ the play place has closed down.  So it worked out that Grandma Knuckles texted wanting to take Aiden out to McDonald's for lunch :)

Later that afternoon I worked on Aiden's cake and we just hung out. That evening our families came over for cake and presents.

Our presents for Aiden before our families showed up.

The first present Aiden opened was the whole set of Cars from Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles and then he couldn't seem to move past them!  This happened last year too where he gets overwhelmed and opens a gift and wants to start playing with it immediately..haha. We had to keep reminding him that he still had other gifts to open!

I didn't get a picture of every gift.

I got this book (My First Airplane Ride) for Aiden from the library a while back and he loved it so much that he memorized the whole thing!  Then he kept mentioning how he wanted it for his "birday", so I was glad I could find it for him.

Janie was loving all of the wrapping paper :)

Then we sung and had cake.  I was pretty pleased with how the cake turned out (at least the top).  I did the 3 by simply placing a cookie cutter on there and filling it with sprinkles and then removing it (found the idea on Pinterest of course!).

I was cracking up because Aiden was singing along with us!

So as usual I was terrible about getting pictures of everyone else, so I quickly snapped these pictures as Kent and Tanis were getting ready to head out :/

Bummed I don't have any with Mom and Amber (Dad was stuck cleaning the church), but by that point Aiden was so done.

It was a nice day though and Aiden is still telling us how much he loves his birthday presents :)  We went to his 3-year check-up today so I'll post his stats next.  We love this boy to death, tantrums and all (more on that later!), and are so grateful for the joy he brings into our lives.