.birthday boy’s day

You wouldn’t know it by looking at his expression in this photo (above), but we had an awesome day on Ames’s birthday this month. We had so much fun making some of his little boy dreams come true—but honestly, Ames would have been ecstatic about his birthday if we had just layed in bed all day. haha He’s easy to please.

When he woke up in the morning he opened his bedroom door and said, “what’s that!?” then he came to my room and excitedly told me there’s a waterfall on his door.

We went for a ride on the Edmonton street car (“train”) same as last year… such a fun time.

 

We accidentally missed the 11:40 train, and then the 12:20 train was too full, so after much waiting and anticipation we finally got onto the 1:00 train! It pushed our day back a bit, but was totally worth it.

 

These vintage streetcars are so incredibly beautiful, I’m glad we got to ride on a different one this year… I think we’ve got a birthday tradition beginning to blossom here.

We met up with the family at the Broadmoor Lake water park for some lunch and fun. So much fun.

  

It’s usually hard to get Ames to leave a park, but this time I simply reminded him: PRESENTS AT HOME

Also I stayed up all night before making this ‘whales in the ocean’ cake ↓↓↓

It turned out aiight. The frosting was cotton candy flavored so that was a hit.

We had Air’s amazing BBQ… he’s a chef I tell you! Please note: **new deck** ↓↓↓

Then finally our patient three year old began his present opening ↓↓↓

 

with a fun surprise gift from the garage ↓↓↓

ALSO, thank you for the gifts Grandma and Grandpa Gusa, Aunts and Uncle, cousin Jake, and Grandma and Grandpa Leary!!!! He truly loves every single thing he opened. 

We sure love to see this boy happy, he deserves it for being so awesome.

(there's more about Ames's third birthday in the previous post below, fyi ↓↓↓)

.three!

What can I say? Ames is an incredible, intelligent, gigantic, handsome, hilarious, sweet, friendly, excited, energetic, stubborn, loud, strong, care-free little boy. And now he is three.

I can’t imagine our family without Ames in it, not only because he makes his presence known at every minute of every day with his little voice narrating, in detail, each thought that enters his mind… but also because of his joyful spirit and excitement. He loves life. He loves our family. He loves our home. He loves doing whatever we’re doing. He wants to be just like his Daddy—and, honestly, I can’t think of a better goal to have in life.

This child is getting better and better with age. I love him to the moon!

Here is a quick overview of a dozen of his personalities (not even half, believe me)↓↓↓

Ames loves “helping” whenever we’re working on our home… he has his own toy tools, but he would much rather have his hands on Daddy’s real tools. ↓↓↓

He has a new bedroom and big boy bed since Alice took his old room and crib back in May. He’s done so great on his big bed and has hardly even gotten out of it when he shouldn’t (he’s only fallen out once, luckily it’s just a mattress on the floor so it wasn’t bad). ↓↓↓

He’s getting better and better at drawing and carries around little notebooks and pencils all the time to practice his skills. This is a drawing of his favorite teddy bear (on his black light drawing pad thing). I asked where the belly button was so he drew that dot there between the legs… haha! ↓↓↓

He loves to watch random kid shows on his Netflix account on Daddy’s surface. He just sits there starting new shows over and over and never really finishes anything. I think he just likes to be in control. Also in this photo he was sucking on a binky and curling his hair into a knot. (backstory: a few months ago the knots in his hair REALLY started to get out of control when they were getting so big and complex that even Air was having a hard time getting them out. We worked with him on trying to stop, but no matter how badly he seemed to want to stop, he would still spin new knots every day when he had his binky… so finally just before his birthday we took away binky’s for good. I didn’t really want to, since I know that it helps him get to sleep for naps (I don’t want to lose nap time!), but things have been really great ever since and he still takes his naps every day without a binky! Miracles really do happen.) ↓↓↓

Overall I would definitely say that Ames has been one of the easiest children in the world… I might be crazy, but I kinda think he's amazing at following rules and behaving well because he understands more than most three year olds should. He doesn’t do things that he realizes might hurt him or others. He listens when we explain rules to him and he just gets it. I’m lucky to be his Mom.

Now lets get you potty trained already, Amesy!