A Birthday Party and a few others

Today we went to Kaden's friend Colin's 2nd birthday party. The weather was perfect -- sunny and 80 degrees -- and the party was a lot of fun. They rented a bounce house for the kids to play in. Kaden wasn't too sure about it at first, but after awhile (and having me go into the bounce house with him clinging to my side) he eventually warmed up to it and was bouncing all around.

In the beginning he would only get down if I was holding both hands. At the very beginning he had found a rock in the yard, and that was how I convinced him to get into the bounce house, by telling him "lets bring the rock!!” so for awhile I was holding each hand and he was holding a rock in one of the hands!


To get out of the bounce house there was a slide, which REALLY helped Kaden ease his fears. He did well with the slide.



And even go in on his own a few times!







Every time I'd try to get a picture of Matt and Kaden, this kid would join in the picture. This is the best one I got :).



Mmm.... then the kids had cupcakes with gummy bears and jelly beans on top! Kaden really didn't care much about the frosting/cupcake, but he loved the candies on top!







Juliet was also at the party. Kaden was excited about that. She was sitting in this little push car and Kaden decided to push her for a ride! They were so cute!

"Here, Juliet, let me turn the radio on for you for your listening pleasure."



"And we're off!!"





A few intermission hugs...



Here he is showing off his muscles to Juliet by pushing one-handed. What a show off. :)



Then Kaden left Juliet for bigger and better things...like sticks.







He really enjoyed the party and didn't want to leave!

We've started slowly packing some boxes in the past week. Kaden sees us packing the baby things, and decides he likes them all over again. Silly boy!





Then when we were packing one room he entertained himself by sitting on his bike.



Last week we used the old plastic Easter eggs and had an Easter egg hunt inside. I filled the eggs with Cheerios and hid them (well, not so much hid, but placed them) around the living room and Marie, Juliet, and Kaden searched for them. I put 2 jelly beans in one of the eggs and Kaden was beyond excited to find that egg. He thought the jelly beans were way better than Cheerios. The egg hunt was a lot of fun for all 3 kids.







A couple daycare pictures





Kaden frequently demonstrates to us how bright he is and what a quick learner he is. He's mastered identifying all the uppercase letters, numbers 1-10, and all of the basic shapes. I decided to start working with him on more complicated shapes (hexagon, trapezoid, octagon, etc). While we were in St. Louis he started yelling "octagon! Octagon!”... Sure enough, there was a stop sign a few streets over that he had spied. This week we were playing with the train set. We often set up different track shapes -- usually by chance. As soon as I put the next to last track piece in, Kaden exclaimed "trapezoid!"... Sure enough, he was right. I told him to stand in the trapezoid and tell me what it was. So that's what he's doing in the picture.



While I was cleaning up lunch that day I could hear Kaden saying "I see blue. I see green. I see Thomas." ...and so on. I looked in the living room and found him sitting in the chair reading his book to himself!



And a few silly, happy, ice cream eating boy pictures.