Making it official

Preschool! So far he seems to love it. I'm so glad we decided to go ahead and start him now instead of waiting until August. He got to take cookies and stickers to school on his birthday to share with his class, and they gave him a sticker and a birthday crown which he reportedly declined to wear ("I said NO!")


Birthday balloon! Probably the best $1.08 I've ever spent.
His family / close friends party was yesterday. We keep it really simple as far as decorations and food, and I was still up until 2 AM Friday and then worked from 9 AM until 1 PM Saturday getting the house and assorted things ready. I'm totally going to force both boys to endure shared birthday parties until they're old enough to complain about it, because I can't imagine doing all that work twice in two months. Sorry, kid #2!

This was the first year Nico had any understanding of what was going on, which made things extra fun. I got this construction machines banner to hang across the fireplace wall and put it up Friday night after he went to bed. As soon as he came downstairs on Saturday morning he spotted it and exclaimed, "Look! A front loader and an excavator and a dump truck and a front loader and an excavator and a dump truck!" He went down the entire twelve-foot garland and named every machine.

His cake began on a very bad note when the first sheet cake I made shredded into pieces when I tried to turn it out of the pan. I rushed to the grocery at 11:45 to get another mix, and for the second I lined the pan with parchment paper to be absolutely sure it wasn't going to stick. I suppose the first cake falling apart was actually a bit of luck, because I ended up using a piece of it to build a second layer on his new cake to make the construction site look more convincing.

(MB would like consulting credits on this design, by the way.)

I didn't take any photos of him opening his gifts. People were almost embarrassingly generous…we really are ridiculously fortunate. Having a house full of people happy to come together to celebrate our little guy is a pretty awesome feeling. And then our friend Norah was passing through town just for the night, so a bunch of our close friends ended up going out for a last-minute dinner. A good day / night for everyone!