Thomas and Friends Birthday Party

Max had such a great birthday! Prepare for picture overload while I tell of his birthday through pics and captions:

 I lined the hallway with balloons and put ribbon things down his doorframe, but when we opened the door for him to come out, he just ran right past everything, not even noticing them. Bryan and I were both awake and I think that distracted him and made him happy at first. When he got to the end of the hallway, he turned around and realized what was hanging up everywhere.

 He loved the balloons and immediately began pulling them off the wall.

 "Bah-bah!" (Balloon)

 He refused to give me a decent picture in front of his birthday sign.

 We had crepes with sweet cream cheese for breakfast, which he loved! *Lately, when I pull out the camera to take a picture, he puts his face super close up to it.

 Bryan had school all day until super late so we had Max open some presents before he left.

 Abuela and Grandpa paid for this animal train for him. He instantly became obsessed with it and refused to open any of the other presents.

 We finally convinced him to open the rest.

 And then he immediately went back to his train.

 On Wednesdays we take Bryan to school so we can have the car and Max insisted on bring his huge train with him.

 We stopped by the park on the way home, but it was super cold and I forgot his sweater so we didn't stay long. He wanted to bring his animal train here too and was mad I made him leave it in the car. Also, he will only slide down this slide headfirst. He would go super fast and fly off at the bottom so I had to hang out down there to catch him every time.

 He slid down one slide with a huge puddle of water at the bottom so I had to take his pants off, which made our next stop a little awkward. We stopped for cupcakes so he could have a treat for his birthday dessert.

 Once the novelty of the animal train wore off, he finally got to enjoy some of his other presents. His Aunt Deborah got him this matching game, which is so great! (This is only about half the cards). Max was super good at it! 

"One more" 

 "Elephant"

 "All done"

 I complained on facebook a little while back about not being able to find pumpkin spice M&Ms. They are exclusive to Target and for two weeks, the Targets around here still didn't have any. A friend of mine saw my post and mailed us some! We opened them immediately and started digging in. They are so good!

 We won these Pocoyo stuffed toys off ebay and they were being sent from China, so we weren't expecting them for another couple weeks, but they came super early on Max's birthday! It was so perfect and Max loves them!

 He would hand one to Bryan and Bryan would say the name of the character and they would keep doing that over and over again. Max thought it was hilarious.

 He was being super silly when he got his cupcake and gave me lots of fun pictures. I guess it's still true: he doesn't really like chocolate cake too much. This was only half a cupcake and he didn't really care to finish it.

 Last picture of his birthday! Such a sweetie!

We had his birthday party a few days later outside at the park (Discovery Playground). It was POURING RAIN when we got there and we had conceded that no one was going to show up. After maybe 10 minutes the rain let up a ton (still pretty cold though) and our friend Stefani came with her cute little daughter Josephine (2), and then 15-20 minutes after that another friend Kris came with his kids, Senna (4?) and Dutch (2). We were excited. We served hot chocolate - which was a genius idea - and cake.

 Max's Thomas and Friends cake, which turned out SO GREAT! We got it from our local grocery store, Yoke's, and want to go back and give the chef our compliments. I don't usually like cake either, but it tasted soooo good. I'm grateful for leftovers.

 Max had already managed to take Thomas off a couple times. All he wanted was to play with him.

 Aaand there he goes again.

 He didn't like us singing "Happy Birthday" to him. 

 Getting increasingly upset.

 Almost crying...

 I guess he decided to man up and thought signing "one more" would get us to finish faster.

 It was too windy for the candle so he got to just dig in.

 He loved the cake and even suckered his daddy into giving him another half piece.

 I think Max is finally starting to be a liitle interested in other kids his age and didn't immediately run away from Josie when she tried playing with him. Cute thing: these are huge steps and we usually help him down them by holding his hand. We weren't close enough, so he grabbed Josie's hand and she could help him down, but obviously she is too small for that, so he had to figure out another way.

Again, Max got to a present he really liked - this was a Pocoyo book - and he didn't want to open more and was mad that I made him. 

 I thought it would be fun to set up his table cloth at home and use the extra Thomas and Friends cups and plates. 

Max had such a good time at his party and I'm so glad we went through with having it, despite it being freezing cold. When all the kids arrived, they stuck close together at the park and I think that's just super cute! Looking back at my last post, it's really hit me how much Max went from being a baby to a toddler in just a year's time. It's amazing to see how much he's grown and continues to grow and develop every day and find new ways to communicate with us. We just love this little guy so much!