Three!

At the end of July, my lovely Caleb turned three. How on earth did that happen, can someone please tell me?! Because I am pretty sure that he was only just born! I used to hear Mums say stuff like that before I had children and I just didn't get it but now that I have my own, I am all too aware of how quickly the time passes!

We bought a water play table for Caleb's Birthday and put it out on the balcony. On his Birthday morning, he opened all of his cards and some of his other presents and then we took him out onto the balcony. He had been with me for some of the time when I was painting it and had spoken words of encouragement to me ("oh Mummy! That's beautiful painting! Clever girl!") but he hadn't seen the end result, nor did he realise that we were turning it into an area for him. He was so thrilled and excited as my boy is obsessed with playing with water. He was out there for ages in his pyjamas playing, he loved it.

 He got a lot of Birthday money and so we bought him some of the cars from the disney film, "Cars". The only one that arrived on time was a huge Lightning McQueen but he was pretty pleased with that so I can't really complain!

We wanted him to have a really lovely Birthday doing things that he loves and talks about doing. Seth had taken the day off work for Caleb's Birthday which made it an extra lovely day. We went swimming with Caleb. Unfortunately Levi had a really bad cough so we thought it would be best for him not to go into the water. Seth stayed out with him and sat in the viewing gallery and Caleb and I went in! This is only the second time in his life we have taken him swimming - he loved it and was terrified at the same time! He was wearing his armbands but he still had his little arms and legs wrapped around me. We ended up being in the water for nearly two hours and the longer we were there, the more confident he got. He ended up jumping in off the side of the pool into my arms and when he finally let me let him go so that he was floating, he said excitedly, "look, Mummy! I'm swimming!" It was pretty adorable.

After swimming the plan was to go to Costa to get carrot cake and a hot chocolate as he loves doing that (my Mum's influence!) and then we were going to go and watch trains; one of Caleb's other loves. When we got into the car to leave the swimming pool I told him the things that we were going to do next. His response? "I want to go home". Um, what? I asked him a few times just to make sure he knew what was on offer but again I got the same response! I thought that maybe we should just go ahead and do what we were going to do anyway, but as Seth pointed out, "it's his Birthday, let him do what he wants!". And so we did. We headed home and he had a lovely afternoon playing with his water table and Lightning McQueen and not once did he get bored! We just had pasta for dinner at his request and then we gave him his Birthday cake - a Lightning McQueen one. No, of course I didn't make it; I know where my skills lie and it most certainly isn't in the kitchen! He freaked out a bit about the candles so Seth ended up blowing them out for him!

It was a lovely, simple Birthday. I kind of feel bad that we didn't do more with it than we did, but we did everything that Caleb wanted and he had a great day with us all, so I'm happy with that!