Preschool

P1 is loving his preschool! He goes to one in our neighborhood that has a total of 8 kids (4 girls and 4 boys). He is always excited to go, and always comes home happy.

They had a field trip to the pumpkin patch at the Cross E Ranch. P3's grandma went with him because I didn't want to take the baby. He said he had a fun time!

P1 with his teacher and classmates:

 

One day he came home with a volcano:

We had a Halloween party at his preschool where parents and younger siblings were invited. They all got to dress up in their costumes. P1 was Leonardo. It was fun to see what things they get to do. P2 also had fun trying out the various activities.

They had a Pancake Cafe set-up that all the kids loved! It was super cute! The kids would come and take our orders, and then go make our pancakes and bring them back.

The sensory bin this month had pumpkin seeds. P2 enjoyed playing in it for a while. 

They had a haunted house that the kids could decorate:

It's been fun to see P1 do so well with preschool. He is also doing really well with Upstart, a free online preschool that we do 5 days a week for at least 15 minutes. He is starting to be able to sound out words now, and is making a lot of progress towards reading. I am glad that we have done both preschools with him!

Birthday Celebration

My family came over a few days early to celebrate P1's birthday. They gave him a TMNT watch, TMNT books, and a TMNT Party Wagon. I think he was most excited about the watch.

My mom asked P1 what treat he wanted, and he said "blue ice cream." So my mom brought Aggie Blue Mint ice cream, and some cupcakes.

P1 reading his ninja turtle books. He can read some of it by himself.

Opening presents from mom and dad (hint: it was more TMNT toys!)

Watching TMNT while eating chicken nuggets:

P1 was very adamant that his birthday cake have all 4 ninja turtles on it. Another Dairy Queen cake for the win!

And just in case he didn't have enough TMNT things, his other grandma and grandpa came over with a few more presents:

Birthday Party

We had an actual birthday party for P1 this year. Mostly because he has been telling his friends for a few months now that they are all invited to his birthday party. I tried to limit how many kids we invited, but it still was probably too much. Especially with a new baby in the house.

We did a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party. We watched an episode from the '80s cartoon. We decorated treat pizzas which were just sugar cookies with red frosting. We got little ninja turtle masks so the kids could each have one. And we had some ninja turtle pages to color. Really, I felt like we kept it low key, but it was still stressful.

Here's the birthday boy!

Decorating treat pizzas! Most of the kids could only eat a bite or two out of it once they were done. One of my sweet friends made the sugar cookies for me, and another sweet friend made the frosting. I'm grateful they were willing to help out with the party. Although it was still crazy due to our toddlers and babies. All the 4 and 5 year olds were pretty manageable.

 

 

It was challenging to make sure everyone was having a good time. We had talked to P1 beforehand to remind him to make sure he played with everyone. And I think he tried his best, but he still doesn't really know how to play with a large group of friends. When I checked up on them in the play room, I found one girl near tears and she said she wasn't having fun. So we changed gears and started coloring. And one of the boys was more shy, so I was worried that he wasn't having fun either. But I think everyone left happy.

So during the party, I was surprised that 2 of P1's friends didn't show up. Mostly because they said they were planning on coming. As we were saying good-bye to the last of our friends, I saw a van pull up. It instantly dawned on me that I sent out the wrong invitation to 2 of our friends. Originally we were going to have it in the afternoon, but we switched it to morning. Well, all the physical copies that we handed out had the correct time. But I texted the invitation to 2 friends, and I sent the one with the wrong time!!! I felt so bad. Epic mom fail! Ugh!!! But we just rolled with it and it worked out. We had a short play date with the one friend, and then after he left, the other friend showed up and we had another little play date. Honestly, I like the one on one play dates much better than the large group ones.

So all in all, we survived our first official birthday party! P1 had a good time even though we had a few hiccups. I think we'll wait a few more years before we do another birthday party.