Birthday celebrations

Nathan had been looking forward to his birthday for almost a month. "I'm having two birthday parties, one at school, one at Happy Hollow." he'd say.

We actually had 3 celebrations for his turning 3. (no wonder I'm so exhausted!)

The day before his birthday (Thursday), we brought a cake to shared with his friends at school. It was a Monsters Inc. themed cake since "monsters" has been on the curriculum lately. Nathan was much more interested in the blue icing than any of the monster characters though. They happened to have music teacher Miss. Anna teaching a class that day, so she sang a Happy Birthday song for Nathan, which he enjoyed very much.

On his real birthday (Friday), both Nathan and I played hooky. In the morning Nathan went to the park with 阿姨 (just like old times), while I stayed home with Evan. Later we all went out to Stanford shopping center to look at the water fountains and had lunch at Palo Alto creamery, which coincidentally was the same place we went for Nathan's birthday lunch last year. I noticed he wasn't as excited about the ice cream as a year ago. Starting to take it for granted that kid!
The rest of the afternoon we did some baking of cupcakes together. Nathan only helped when there was a hand mixer involved =)


His official birthday party was on Saturday at Happy Hollow park and zoo. We had invited about 10 families with kids and Nathan very much enjoyed getting to spend the day with friends at his new favorite place. We started off at the merry-go-round, then petting zoo, then lunch and cupcakes! Nathan was so exhausted he actually fell asleep before the party ended.

After all this, I'm pretty sure Nathan knows what "birthday" means now. He knows there's presents involved, and a cake, and inviting guests. But he doesn't quite understand how rare a birthday is yet. Sometimes he'll ask to buy a new toy, and now I'd just say, "Sorry Nathan, it's not your birthday anymore. We can get it for you for your next birthday." He seems to be perfectly satisfied with that answer, nodding his head in agreement, "next birthday!"