More Parties!

We are so fortunate to live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. Even more so, there are a lot of young kids. And to one-up that, we have neighbors behind us and across the street with kids the same age as Maddux and Eli. As luck would have it, two of those kids have birthdays on either side of Eli's special day, so today was party-time. The neighborhood jump castles were rented, popcorn was popped, games were played, and cake was eaten. Maddux didn't quite understand her part in the jump-castle equation, but she did enjoy the stand-up-fall-down aspect of it all. Eli did a little of everything, including eating his cupcake in one bite. And then asking for more. Probably my favorite part of the day was as we were walking to the party. Eli saw the jump castle and said, "I jump in dat!!! I wanna jump in dat thing with Max!!" Then, after he ate his cupcake, Eli had some popcorn. Not something I would have offered Maddux, but at one point I saw Eli feeding her some (because she signed 'please' to him). Such a nice big brother. Does it get any better than that?

After naps we planned to host a pizza dinner to some friends, but a fever got in the way, so we were on to plan B. The hosts of the party this morning were outside about the time I got the cancellation news, so I offered up our dinner plans to them. They were in and another family joined us as well. We blew up the jump castle from this morning and let the kids jump to their hearts' content. Then Eli discovered one of his friends had a foam rocket launcher. He was set for the rest of the night. Maddux milled around playing with the kids and getting within three feet of the dog the whole time. The pizza arrived and we set up the (six) kids at a kids table. I decided to put a plate of broken up pizza and fruit in front of Maddux just to see how she would do. She actually didn't make any more mess than she makes when she's in her booster chair. She did lift up the plate towards the end in an attempt to 'drink' it (like a cereal bowl), but besides that she ate as well as Eli did. She also stole fruit from his plate. Even though hers was full. Even though she had plenty in her bib. Speaking of which, Eli might (finally!) be done with the bib. He asked me to not put one on him about a week ago and since then he's kept it pretty clean. (I told him that was the stipulation.) Looks like three means he's all grown up!