Coleman = Five.

Our sweet Buddy-boy turned 5 last Saturday.  FIVE.

This will be a big year.  This is the year that he will start kindergarten!  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?  Geesh!  As if it won’t fly by fast enough!

Coleman is a silly, loving, caring little buddy.  He gives plenty of hugs and kisses to his mommy.  Two nights before his birthday, I hugged him up in the living room chair and told him, “Tomorrow will be your very last day as a four year old!”  He hugged my neck and held on tight for a long time.  The next night as I was kissing him goodnight, he giggled and said, "I'll be back for bigger kisses tomorrow when I'm five!"  He was highly anticipating this birthday. 

At five years old, Coleman loves doing puzzles.  He loves learning about things that he is interested in, like sharks and dinosaurs.  He will read / look at a non-fiction shark book for an hour.  He has gained a bit of an interest in drawing but still isn’t too interested in learning to write all his letters.  He can write his name, he can copy words that I write first, and he can identify some/most of the letters…but he just isn’t too interested.  Sometimes I’ll work with him and he learns a lot, other times he gets frustrated really quickly and gives up.  We are working on learning to deal with and express frustration instead of getting angry and throwing things.    I think this struggle comes because he is a perfectionist…if he can’t do it exactly perfect the first time, then he wants to give up.  It takes some convincing to make him believe that that drawing IS good and DOES look like a horse, or that I can tell what that letter is that he just made.   

Although it is winter, we are in Texas…so on days when it is not too chilly out, he and Shelby run outdoors the moment we get home from school and spend their evening hours playing out there until it gets dark.  On days when it IS too chilly out, they sometimes do it, too!  They like to play “Spy” and “Ninja.”  They “cook” things with blades of grass, berries, acorns, and mud.  They climb up in their fort and jump on the trampoline.  They have great imaginations and use them constantly. 

Just last week Coleman perfected the hardest parts of riding a bike with no training wheels…starting and stopping on his own.  He skidded and fell one time on Friday, even skinned his wrist a little, but jumped up and yelled, “I’m ok!” and hopped back on.

We had Coleman’s birthday party at the Ice Skating rink here in NRH.  We only invited friends from his class at school, and he had a great group show up.  Close to 20 little ones out on the ice…we sold them out of the walkers they have to help them skate.

Daddy recently recorded Tron on our DVR and it quickly became one of Cole’s favorite movies.  We let him watch it the night before his party, and we caught him watching it like this:

So the theme was TRON.  It was a fun little theme. 
Invitations:

Back

We had a little mishap with the cupcake company 2 days before the party so Friday night after my biology lab, we set out to make our own.  We had fun making them so it all worked out better anyway!

I made the cupcakes and iced them, Shelby did the sprinkle dipping, and Daddy did the black and blue disks. 
What’s gonna work?  Team work!  (And now I’m sad that my kids are too old to watch Wonder Pets.)

At the party we used our handy-dandy <--Blue’s Clue’s reference…I guess I’m feeling nostalgic cupcake tower, and circled the cupcakes with blue glow bracelets.  Good enough.

The ice skating rink is also where the Fort Worth Brahmas play pro hockey games!  Our party was in a suite, with the table in the space outside.  The suite was COLD (obviously) but it was pretty cool.  At the beginning of the party we got to watch some big dudes practicing, then the kids watched as the cleaned/prepared/whatever they do the ice.

Nonnie printed out some Tron coloring pages for us so the kids would have something to do as they waited for pizza and cake.

There was not a lot of space, and it was quite hectic with our overwhelmed party hostess, but luckily both my mother and mother-in-law pulled out their little stash and insisted that I take a xanax.  Talk about good women to have around!  haha…sorry but that is definitely one for the baby book!

Some crazy woman (me?!) let Coleman spray his hair blue for the occasion.

This dad wanted a picture with me because he thought I looked “just like Tina Fey.” Ha!

There was pizza and cupcakes

Then it was time to skate!  Matthew was ready to go:

Shelby was able to skate some on her own, and also used her uncle for help.

Buddy had a good time…

The four and five year olds had varying degrees of success on the ice, but all but one tried it and lasted at least 30 minutes!  I was very proud of all of them.  It was cold, new, and difficult, and everyone did a great job.

After the party, we headed over to Nonnie & Poppy’s house to open presents.  To be continued…