One!

Brisbane's birthday was March 15th. You have probably already read about the mix of emotions I had that day. This post will just be about all of the fun we had celebrating. There are lots of pictures, because I just couldn't choose. So it will be kind of long.
I found this cute Monster Mask kit at Target on clearance last week and I thought it would be a fun craft to do with the big kids during structured play time. They chose the colors for Brisbane's masks and I made those ones. Then they got to decorate their own.
They did a really good job deciding where all of the stickers and eyes should go.

And boy were they adorable when it was all said and done. These are genuine smiles too...no bribery necessary. Of course, Jessenia's mask broke less than 30 minutes later and she informed me that she wanted to throw it in the garbage. I of course let her after confirming that is what she really wanted. When I then told her that she could not have Brisbane's masks she had a freak out. But we dug her broken one out of the garbage and nuclear disaster was averted.

Brisbane wasn't as excited about wearing his mask. He mostly just wanted to eat it.

Brisbane's favorite activity is playing with the dishes in the dishwasher. Dishes are always a total disaster at our house because they have to be done when Brisbane is sleeping or completely distracted (although he is very sneaky and has a sixth sense about when the dishwasher is open and comes out of nowhere). But for his birthday I decided to let him go at it (after removing all of the knives). That cutting board and all of the utensils had to be rewashed, but he had the time of his life.

Then we opened presents. I did a little photo shoot with him and his haul. I had to give him that package so he could eat the wrapping paper on it, otherwise he wouldn't have sat still.

Yum, paper!

My big boy!

The kids were extremely jealous of Brisbane's gifts. Reese asked me, "Mom, on my birthday, am I going to turn one?" It made me kind of sad. We don't know what birthdays were like for them before but I could tell it was nothing like this. I told him he was going to get to be FOUR and that he would still get presents and get to do fun things, get to pick where we eat dinner, and get cake and ice cream. He seemed satisfied though slightly skeptical.

We had to remind Reese and Jessenia lots of times that the presents were for Brisbane and if he wanted to play with them, they needed to let him. But he wanted to share them with them all the other times that he wasn't interested in them. They didn't get it.

A tradition of my family for birthdays, that Mack and I have adopted, is to let the birthday boy/girl pick where we go out to dinner. I have decided this is a perk of a large family. I have already accumulated five nights a year that I guaranteed don't have to cook dinner.

Obviously Mack and I had to choose for Brisbane. We choose Cici's Pizza. A cheap, not so great, but good pizza buffet. All of the kids we free. Reese doesn't like pizza (looney toon) and only wanted salad. Jessenia was in heaven (her favorite food is pizza) and Brisbane really liked it too. He especially liked the breadsticks and throwing things on the floor.

We had to kill some time after pizza to let the food settle before we ate cake. We put together some of the presents and let the kids go at it.

This was Reese and Jessenia's first test of letting Brisbane play with his toys whenever he wants. Jessenia only wanted a Little People Grandma and Grandpa with suitcase that Brisbane was not at all interested in. Reese however wanted that whole Little People train station to himself. Brisbane wanted to sit on it and push the buttons (still his favorite way to play with it). Reese didn't like that because then he couldn't play too. But he handled it generally well.

Brisbane really liked his farm.

But mostly he liked the farm animals. Since he refusese to walk, he has mastered the art of carrying things in his mouth while crawling. Including that sheep.

Then we had cake. You hear stories about kids who just poke the cake. And then you hear of those who get it all over. Brisbane generally loves to rub all food into his hair. But he was somewhere in between the extremes with the cake.

He certainly did more than poke it. And I even found some in his ear the next day. But he did not rub it all over his hair. He actually liked the ice cream more than the cake. (Definitely his father's son.)

Still a bath was in order. (Love how he edited himself with that cup. Good one Brisbane!)

It was a long and fun day. I was beat and had to leave the dishes until the next day. Bad idea.

First thing that Jessenia asked me the next morning, "Where's Grandpa?" I thought she was asking about her grandparents. But no. She was asking about that darn Little People Grandpa. Go figure. "You do remember that the Grandpa is Brisbane's right?" "Yeah. Sure. Whatever, Mom. Where is it?"