Puzzles, Pancakes, & the Playground -- Now THAT'S a Party!

Can you believe it? Jacob is four. He's four. HE IS FOUR! I'm sorry. I have to repeat it to let it sink in. It seems just like it was yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. He was so tiny (under 6 pounds at that particular time). We sat and watched him sleep. We listened to him make those precious little baby sounds. We tried desperately to get him to eat.

Four years later, things have changed. Instead of watching him sleep, now we just pray that he will sleep past 6:00 AM, as well as take a nice long afternoon nap. And those cute little baby sounds that used to make us melt? They've turned into a running faucet of questions and conversation. While Jacob still has the ability to make us melt (like today when he told me I was "so pretty"), more often than not, his random comments and questions now make us laugh...REALLY hard. Trying to get him to eat is still a challenge. If it isn't a snack or breakfast food, he isn't interested. When he was a newborn, we had to go to extreme measures to make him eat (i.e. letting him drink milk from a tiny little medicine cup). Now our "extreme measures" consist of singing the "Party in My Tummy" song and not letting him eat the next meal until all of the last meal is gone. For example, he wouldn't eat dinner the other night, so he was forced to forego his regular breakfast food and eat meatballs, lima beans and rice from the night before. He didn't like it, but eventually ate it, knowing if he didn't, he would find the same meal in his lunchbox.

Jacob's favorite meal is breakfast. He loves cereal, pancakes, waffles, eggs, sausage, bacon, etc... It's the one meal I know he will eat. Given his affinity for breakfast foods, it only makes sense that his favorite restaurant would be IHOP. When we're traveling, he can spot an IHOP from a mile away and if he had his way, we would eat at IHOP several times a week. "How about we just go to IHOP for dinner," he says. The boy LOVES IHOP. As I tried to come up with fun, creative ideas for his fourth birthday party, in the back of my mind, I knew a party at his favorite restaurant would thrill him like no other party could. I decided to go with it -- a pancake party at IHOP.

He absolutely loved it. Since it was his birthday, I even gave him free reign of the syrup. His create-a-face pancake was swimming...errrr...make that drowning...in every variety of syrup. He quickly discovered that you can, indeed, have too much of a good thing. He hardly ate any of his drowned pancake.

Despite the drowned pancake, he and his friends had a great time and the IHOP employees couldn't have been any nicer. They were so incredibly helpful and patient with us.

Since one of Jacob's favorite activities is putting puzzles together, we gave them out as party favors. The kids were happy to have something to do while we waited on our pancakes.

Annabelle enjoyed herself too.

THE CAKE

Jacob decided he wanted a puzzle cake this year. I did a little internet research (and of course, called Erika to make sure this was doable) before I said, "okay." Erika and I worked tirelessly through the night and this is what we came up with. I was pleased. Erika was pleased. Jacob was pleased. As I rediscover every year, baking and decorating cakes is a lot of fun...and a lot of work. Thank you, Erika, for ALL your help!!!!!

After the chaos fun at IHOP, Jacob had a serious sugar rush. We drove over to the playground so he could burn off some of that extra energy.

It was a very fun morning and Jacob had a blast. God even turned down his thermostat for us and kept the temperature below 90 degrees while we were at the playground. What more could we ask for?! Family...check. Friends...check. Good food...check... Fun party...check. Nice weather...check. Everything was perfect! Happy fourth birthday, Jacob! I love you so much!! Let's take this next year a little slower, ok? :)