'Win Blog: Happy Birthday Judah!

I can't believe my happy Judah is three! Although he enjoyed his birthday party yesterday (one day early) our birthday boy met the start of his third year with a bit of trepidation - stating "I am not three I am TWO!" when I said happy birthday to him this morning. The balance of our day was spent celebrating him while respecting his wishes for a low-key, decidedly "non-birthday" day (sigh).

He wanted waffles for breakfast, his usual breakfast fare, and when we asked where he would like to go for his birthday lunch after church he said "a grilled cheese restaurant". The boy loves grilled cheese sandwiches. There happens to be a place just down the street from church called Say Cheese, so we figured we would go there, but when we arrived Judah exclaimed "But I want to go to Lenny's and get a grilled cheese". This is what he meant all along. Lenny's is where we go nearly every week after church to grab a bagel. So this too was another typical part of our day that he didn't plan on altering for the sake of his birthday. Such a funny kid, he just wanted to do what we always do, so we did of course. He selected BBQ potato chips and happily ate his grilled cheese.

My parents and sister decided to take him and Gabriel to the museum for the afternoon. He was in oppositional mode from not wanting it to be his birthday, but he loves the natural history museum so he spent the afternoon making my family chase him around. Stinker.

We had planned to have a small birthday party at his school the next day, read a book and bring in cupcakes from his birthday party, but after the day he had I figured we better start thinking of a plan B. I didn't want to force him to celebrate something that he was clearly processing, but I wanted to celebrate him and being three and his teachers did too. He had already chosen Go, Dog, Go as his book to share with the class, so when I dropped him off his teacher suggested we frame it as "a dog party" instead of Judah's birthday. So I rushed home, baked up some chocolate banana mini muffins, iced them with paw prints and left over M&Ms from his party and raced back to school to read Go, Dog, Go and have a dog party. He LOVED it. We never said a word about his birthday but we got to celebrate him and a book he loves. His teacher mentioned afterwards that some kids just need a few days to adjust to a new age and he would work it out, so we decided to just let it go. Sure enough, on the way home from school he suddenly (unprompted) exclaimed "I'm three, I'm three, it's my birthday!". Whew.

Below is a re-cap of our birthday boy, the turning 3 weekend, and his Monsters Inc birthday party. It is worth noting that Judah does not like his picture taken and will go out of his way to ensure a proper photograph cannot be taken of him. A very happy birthday to our funny, bright, silly, affectionate Judah!!