momMY slice of life: Dylan's Birthday

I still can't believe my baby is eight. That sounds like such a big kid to me. And I guess he is. He's a wonderful, sweet, smart, and funny big kid.

We started the morning SUPER early. Daniel had to be at work at 6:30 because he was taking a half off and leaving work really early in the day. This means Daniel leaves the house at 5:30 AM. I knew Dylan would be sad if he woke up on his birthday and his Daddy wasn't there, so I told Daniel he could wake Dylan up at 5:20 and have some birthday-cuddle time. Well, our little birthday man woke up on his own around 5:15. He was too excited to sleep, I guess. London heard all the commotion and soon she was wide awake. Since we were all up I decided to cook breakfast right then so that Daniel could eat with us. I am NOT a morning person, and I'm pretty sure my eyes were never 100% open during breakfast, but I'm so glad that we had time to begin our day together, especially on Dylan's big day.

This year was a little different than years past. For the first time since he's been in school, Dylan's birthday did not fall on Labor Day weekend. Also, London just started school, so she wasn't with us during the day. It was sort of odd, but it turned out to still be a great day and we still found time to cram in lots of birthday love and celebration.

Daniel met me at Dylan's school and we had lunch together. I stopped and picked up Taco Bell, per the Birthday Boy's request.

We asked the teacher if we could come back in the afternoon and bring cupcakes.Dylan was so funny acting like he was directing the music while his friends sang happy birthday. I love that he doesn't shrivle up and feel embarrassed being the center of attention, but to the contrary he thrives in the spot light. I have no idea where he got that from ;)

I have always made cupcakes for Dylan's class on his birthday. I love making cupcakes and finding cute ways to decorate them. This year when we started talking about class cupcakes Dylan said he wanted to buy them at the store. I almost let it hurt my feelings but I think its just something new and fun for him. I have to admit it was nice to not be up until midnight the night before making cupcakes. And I'm tickled pink to annouce that after trying something new, Dylan has told me that my cupcakes taste better and that next year he'd like me to go back to making them. THAT makes for a happy mommy heart.

We picked London up from school and rushed home for her to decorate a birthday cake for her brother.
She picked out all the decorations and nd did 90% of the decorating all by her self.

She picked green frosting, stars, and worms for his cake. She called said the theme (yes, my 3 year old knows what a theme is and uses the word pretty often, actually) was "Out of Space Worms". She said she chose this because her brother loves worms and out of space. LOVE!

Back tracking here, but another tradition we have is to fill the birthday boy/girl's room with balloons, while they sleep, the night before their birthday. My kids LOVE this tradition. They wake up so excited to play in their balloon pit. And the balloons stay around for at least a week or so.

Okay, back on track now...
Grammy came over and when Dylan got home from school we opened presents and blew out the candles on his cake. We meant to eat cake, but the kids got so distracted with playing with toys that we actually forgot to!!

I have to take a second to note some of the things on Dylan's wishlist this year because I feel like it speaks to how grown up he is becoming. On the top of his list were: a phiten necklace, football gloves, and a video game. I mean, I couldn't stop smiling when I was shopping at the sports store for my boy's birthday. Thats always something I dreamt having a boy would include (sporty stuff like that) but I imagined it being for a big teenage boy.