Happy Birthday, Brent!

Yesterday, the monkey-boy turned 3. We decided he really should have a party because he recognizes and understands parties and all the balloons and decorations and presents and figured he would get excited about it. It was just immediate family, a small cake, and some steaks and beer, but Brent seemed to have a GREAT time. :) Get rrrrrready for piiiictuuuures!

Brent helped us with decorations:


This is Will baking the birthday cake (how sexy is that??):


Never too young to start a crazy new fashion trend:


What a monkey-boy can do to a cake in about 2 minutes of "Hey, Brent's awfully quiet..." time (he was double- and triple-dipping a cookie into the cake, for extra flavor dontcha know):


Opening presents came before cake because everyone was FULL from dinner and my inlaws were exhausted and wanting to go home. Lil B liked the bows as much as the presents themselves, and pre-removed all of those before officially starting:


Probably the biggest hit of the party, the gift from Aunt Kate of a new wading pool with a sprinkler/bubble blower, as well as a pair of blow-up hands for Brent and Daddy:

And I HAD to share this one. The boys are having a water kick splash fight and I timed the picture by sheer luck so it looks like they're doing some kinda white-boy version of a Native American war dance:


And finally, we did cake. (By the way, I did protest the red tshirt with the safety orange shorts. But when Will helps me dress the boy, Will chooses the outfits):

Brent wanted to cut the cake himself. Considering it was his birthday (and the cake was already half demolished) we all laughed and said, "Suuuuure!"

See the knife?

And the classic "face" a 3 yr old pulls when he discovers that Mama's not just being mean when she says, "Don't eat the candle."


Just a couple more playing with presents pictures, because the boy looks awfully cute in this one:

And so does my man, my manly man, making that noise... you know, the one little boys make when they're playing with their car and truck and boat toys:


And that's finally all I'll torture you with. Let me just say, I'm glad I won't ever have to do another birthday party pregnant again. And that we still have a couple of years at least before we have to do it with a houseful of kids rather than just helpful adult family members.

We have POTTY POWER!

So, this weekend I mentioned to Will that Brent KNEW what to do but in my opinion just hadn't made the connection between his potty power routine and the sensations of a full bladder and actually going to the bathroom, etc. I thought a good solution would be to train him like we trained our puppies (which took all of 2 days, thank you): let him run around monkey-nekkid, keep a close watch on him, and as soon as he started to have an accident, scoop him up and run him to the toilet. This is something I cannot do right now! So, Will agreed to try it, and IT WORKED! He only had to do one scoop and run, and Brent was so thrilled with himself and with all the rejoicing that ensued we've only had one little accident since Sunday with NO diapers worn around the house whatsoever except at night. BUT this morning he woke up and asked me to take it off so he could use the toilet!

I'm super proud and so happy with our lil man, who is now officially a "Big Kid" in Potty Power terms. (I give so much credit to the great Potty Power video by Mazzarella!) I know it's only been a few days but we have a really solid start here, and I'm hoping it's soon enough that he'll be firmly in the habit by the time Gianna is born and the regression then won't be too bad. We'll see.