My Baby Boy is Three: How Did That Happen?

Bennett turned three years old yesterday. Sniff, Sniff, Weep. Shhhh.... if you listen closely enough, you can hear my heart breaking.

How did he become a big boy so fast? In the last year, he has gone from saying things like "Whassa name?" (What's his name?) to saying "Hi, I'm Bennett. What's your name?" He's gone from sitting in a high chair to sitting in a big boy chair. From sleeping in a crib to sleeping in a big boy bed. From diapers to big boy underwear. I just can't believe how much he's grown up this year and how quickly he has gone from baby to big boy.

This year was the first year that Bennett really understood about his birthday, and he's been excited about it for a while. So of course I figured it was the perfect year to start some... you guessed it... birthday traditions!

The first tradition is that Bennett got to pick anything he wanted for all three meals on his birthday.

For breakfast he chose a bagel and a smoothie. What he doesn't know is that I snuck broccoli into the smoothie! Haha!

For lunch he chose corn dogs. I'd never made them before, but they came out delicious and were surprisingly easy to make! Here's the great recipe I used!
*note: I cut out the bacon and blue cheese for Bennett and just made them plain.


And see... it was so worth the effort! Look how super excited he is about the special birthday lunch his Mama made for him!

Notice that the first thing he did was eat the breading right off the dog... Carb lovers of the world, unite!

For dinner he chose mac-n-cheese.

(No picture... mac and cheese is not that exciting...)

Then he got to participate in another birthday tradition that Neil and I have been doing for a while. For his birthday cake, he got to pick any cake out of Mama's special cake cookbook. (Note: this tradition will be especially fun when Neil and the kids are in charge of making Mama's birthday cake!)

Of course, he wanted to help me make the cake...

Here he is with batter all over his face...

Here's the cake about to go in the oven:

And here's the finished product:

For Bennett's birthday gift, we got him his first trike or "bicycle" as he likes to call it. Here's it is adorned with balloons.

Of course when he saw it, he cared much more about the balloons than the bike Daddy went to go get the night before at 9:30 and spent all night putting together... (McPreachy is such a great daddy!) But as soon as he got over the initial excitement from the balloons, he realized he had a bike of his very own, and he rode it around and rang the bell all day long.

Here are a few precious shots of the birthday boy on his new trike.

Bennett also got some new paints for his birthday to go with his easel. Here he is painting.