Happy 5th Birthday Jaden!

My baby boy is 5! I cannot believe it, truly these past 5 years have flown by! I was getting all nostalgic today, someone asked me when the last time I taught and it was 5 years ago on Friday the 12th. Here comes the inevitable birth story since I'm feeling all nostalgic. . .Five years ago (and one day) on Thursday the 11th, I was busy wrapping Christmas presents, making gingerbread dough for my class for the following day and watching a Christmas movie on tv. I kept getting some "weird" pains but nothing bad, so I stayed up until 2 or so in the morning working hard. I got up the next morning and brought the cookie dough to school and had some (what I now know was) labor pains, but I really thought that I had plenty of time to make gingerbread cookies with my class. Within an hour I called Todd to pick me up and we went back to our place to grab our bags and head to the hospital (contractions were 2-3 min. apart already).

We arrived at the hospital at about 11 and they put me in triage, the contractions were coming quick though and I was feeling fairly bad. Todd went to grab some lunch and I tried to get some rest. Soon after Todd returned they admitted me into a room and this is when I started to want some drugs! They apparently had read my birth plan where I stated that I wanted to go natural as long as possible. . . so they put me in the jacuzzi tub but that wasn't helping, they gave me something through an iv but I didn't feel anything from it. I NEEDED an epidural. I had gone from 3 cm dilated to 7 cm dilated in less than an hour and that anesthesiologist could not arrive fast enough! He came, the wonder drug kicked in and I felt much better. Then they gave me my first dose of medicine for strep b, everyone didn't think I was going to make it to the second dose before the baby came but I did. At 9:51 pm Jaden Todd was born weighing in at 8 lbs. 9 oz and 21 in. long. He was absolutely perfect!

We held Jaden's 5th birthday party last Saturday at a local bowling alley. The kids had a great time bowling, eating and running around.

Here's the birthday boy.

Goofing off with his friend Graison.

Laurel bowling.

Bryson who was in quite the mood at the party. He kept saying, "It's mine birthday!"

Getting a few bowling tips from Daddy.

Graison taking his turn.

J showing us how it's done.

His bowling lane birthday cake made by me.

Another angle of the easiest birthday cake that I have made yet!

Cupcakes too.

Make a wish!

Present time, all of his buddies enjoyed helping out!

Our big boy:)


This week in preschool Jaden got to be "snack master" which means we provide snack everyday and Jaden gets to be the line leader and also lead calendar time in his classroom. He has been anticipating this since September! On Friday, they celebrated his birthday and Todd was able to come (since I was with Bryson at co op) and see a traditional Montessori birthday circle.

In this picture, Jaden is putting a candle in the middle of the circle to act as the sun. There is also a circle of different colored yarn representing each of the 4 seasons around the black circle. After everything is set up by Jaden, he takes the classroom globe and the children sing, "The earth goes around the sun, the sun. The earth goes around the sun. It takes 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days". During this Jaden walks around the circle with the globe and when he gets back to his starting point Todd got to read a little something about what Jaden did in his first year of life. This process repeats until he goes around 5 times (and Todd read something special about each of his 5 years). Then everyone sang Happy Birthday to him. Afterwards he passed out cupcakes and some special goodies to his classmates.

After dinner we once again sang Happy Birthday with the leftover cupcakes from his class celebration. Little did he know. . .

. . . that we put . . .

. . . trick candles on his cupcake!

Happy 5th birthday baby! Don't grow up too fast on me:)