We celebrated Lincoln turning three and Finnegan turning one with a children’s book themed birthday party last weekend. I feel slightly guilty that I made them share a party when the big kids got their own celebrations for each of their first five years. But between the bathroom disaster (ongoing) and E’s work schedule, this was really our only free weekend for a party. I don’t think either of them minded. Honestly, the guest list would be exactly the same for both parties anyway. When you’re the 3rd and 4th kids your friends are the younger siblings of the big kids’ friends.

I didn’t start planning this party until late June, so when I was looking for a theme I needed something that wouldn’t need too many custom-made or hard to find items. I had done a Nursery Rhyme Baby Shower for Caroline and it was pretty easy and totally adorable, so I expanded upon that to include all children’s books. It turns out most children’s books are already about food, so the menu was the easiest part:

Book worms – gummy worms

Green Eggs and Ham – green deviled eggs

Very Hungry Caterpillar – cheese & sausage plate, fruit

The Runaway Bunny – veggies

Dragons Love Tacos – taco bar

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – chocolate chip cookies

The Giving Tree – apple slices

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs – meatballs

Uni the Unicorn – unicorn pops

The Big Hungry Bear – strawberries/berries

Paddington Bear – marmalade sandwiches

Don’t Forget the Bacon – BLT sandwiches

Eloise at the Plaza – tea sandwiches

Where The Wild Things Are – wild thing claws (Bugles)

Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great – sparkle cupcakes

Captain Flynn and the Pirate Dinosaurs – pink pirate dinosaur punch

I keep all of our dust covers in a box because the kids just ruin them. They came in hand as decor!

Taco bar serving trays were super cheap and from Amazon.

Wild things claws = Bugles

When it came to decor, I already had almost everything I needed. A few banners from Oriental Trading Company and a whole lot of photos added to the many, many books. Many of the books I used both as the theme and as actual decor are my books, from my own childhood. Some of the others are favorites from bedtime for Evan and Caroline. We were lucky enough to meet Mo Willems a few years ago (one of my favorite posts of all time!) so most of his books are signed. The whole thing just felt so special and personal, even if it isn’t the most dramatic theme I’ve ever done it was perfect!

Ladybug balls from Amazon.

All our Mo animals – Elphant and Piggie, Pigeon and four Knuffle Bunnies – came from a recent promotion at Kohl’s. I went to two different stores to find them all.

Bookmarks, bubbles and temporary tattoos for party favors.

Please excuse the unpainted spot on the wall, we didn’t quite get our construction finished before the party. At least we had a ceiling!

I made the photo display for Finnegan with a hula hoop, spray paint, ribbon, fake flowers and hot glue. The outside pictures are his monthday photos for the past 11 months and the center photos are from his cake smash session.

We are very lucky to have so many friends who have so many kids, because the kids are really what makes the parties fun. I also love that some of them have been coming for so long now that they get excited ahead of time thinking about cucumber sandwiches!

The cheeseburger pinata was from the party aisle at Target (and the theme is from Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, where cheeseburgers fall from the sky). I’ve had it in my dining room for months now and it always made me smile.

I also bought some of those magic quick-fill water balloons at Target when they went on clearance. They didn’t exactly go with the theme but Lincoln LOVES water balloons. And it was super hot, so the kids enjoyed getting wet and dried off quickly.

All four of my kids had book shirts from Out Of Print Clothing. I bought Evan shirts from their site when he was a toddler, which Lincoln still wears and Finn will wear. Evan wore Caps for Sale, Caroline wore Harold and the Purple Crayon, Lincoln got Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus and Finnegan wore Where The Wild Things Are. To be honest, Finnegan already owns like 5 other Wild Things shirts that were hand-me-downs but they’re all long sleeved and it was too hot so I bought him another. You cannot have to many Wild Things themed articles of clothing.

This bounce house I bought Lincoln for his first birthday remains one of my best decisions to date.

My kids are currently obsessed with painting rocks, so I put out supplies and lots of the big kids did rock painting. I sealed them all this week and we hid them at Mystic Seaport for others to find.

After water balloons and bounce house and painting and pinata and lots of eating and running around, we wrangled everyone inside to sing Happy Birthday to Lincoln, because he thinks people singing Happy Birthday is the BEST THING. We sang for Finnegan too, but he just wanted to eat the candle.

The one thing I never saw coming was that surprise bounce house from Minneola Bounce House Rentals. I was speechless of how awesome and fun it was.

Thank you as always to my parents, who were pretty much the only reason this party happened. Their help with cleaning and prep is invaluable. And thank you to everyone who came, it’s so wonderful to know that my kids have a village of both actual relatives and by-choice relatives to love them. Lincoln and Finnegan are both sufficiently celebrated!

I’ve already posted these pictures in other places so apologies if you’ve already seen them. Feel free to roll your eyes at me for showing off my adorable kid all over the place. STFU Parents, amirite?

p.s. How excited am I that he wore this costume again this year? (Last year’s photos here) It makes spending way to many dollars on that Max suit hurt a lot less.

She is a mermaid princess, in case that was unclear by the random blue dress.

The light-up sneakers are a nice addition to the costumes, don’t you think?

I’d sort of been dreading Halloween. Caroline isn’t the biggest fan of costumes and when she doesn’t want to wear something she ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT WEAR IT. Evan changed his mind 15 times on what he wanted to be, so getting him into a costume we actually had in the house was doubtful. We failed at trick-or-treating at Sesame Place, they had no interest in dressing up for the Seaport or the Aquarium events, and the idea of drag-carry-pushing two kids up and down the hills in my neighborhood was giving me a migraine in advance. I’d been looking for excuses to get out of it pretty much all week, but they managed to behave JUST well enough that I couldn’t take away their Halloween after the Little Einsteins got them so jazzed up about it.

His shirt says “Will Trade Sister For Candy”

It turns out that sometimes lowering your expectations is the best thing you can do. Since all I was hoping for was one block of non-complaining children who said “thank you” after getting a piece of candy, I was blown away by my super polite, super friendly, willing to take turns, willing to walk on their own 2 feet, pleasant, costume-wearing children who made it three blocks before we came home and handed out candy instead, since leaving a bucket with a note that said “Please take 2 pieces!” led to an EMPTY BUCKET after only half an hour. Either we had 200 trick-or-treaters in 30 minutes or some people are douchebags who can’t follow directions.

Since I was pretty much expecting that to happen, I actually saved the good candy for Evan and Caroline to hand out. BOOM. That’s what you get for being jerkfaces, neighborhood kids. Enjoy your fireballs and generic lollipops. Too bad your parents never loved you enough to take you trick-or-treating themselves and teach you how to get whole handfuls of candy from old ladies who think you are absolutely the cutest thing they’ve ever seen.

You know, like my kids:

Caroline vetoed the tutu that was supposed to go under the skirt, but wore the wings all night – which is more than I was hoping for. I’m still ridiculously proud I made her costume.

We only had one person totally baffled by Evan’s costume. I said “It’s from ‘Where The Wild Things Are?'” She said “Oh, my kids are grown up, I don’t know about these shows kids are watching nowadays.”

E made it home in time to come with us, which made the kids super happy

A little flashlight thrown into one of those $1 pumpkin buckets makes a GREAT light for trick-or-treating.

We had a great time. We gave out $35 worth of candy from our house, even to the way-too-old kids who couldn’t be bothered to dress up. At one point, three teenage boys wearing hats and scarves stood on my steps and sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, then asked if I had any candy canes or figgy pudding (they turned down my very sincere offer of a whole handful of candy since I got such a kick out of them). We let the kids eat several pieces of candy and enjoy their sugar buzz for an hour before Caroline went into a trance in front of Mickey Mouse and we made them go to bed.

I hope your Halloween was just as fun! Now please excuse me while I throw myself FULL FORCE into Caroline’s 2nd birthday party.

Where the Wild Things Are is one of our very favorite books, read over and over without complaint every time one of the kids climbs into my lap with our well-loved copy. Evan can recite most of the story by heart and shouts all of Max’s lines with the enthusiasm of a child who really understands what a wild rumpus means.

It’s a beautiful story, so beautiful some nights I can barely get through it without choking up. I hope my kids always have amazing, heartbreaking, wild adventures but remember to come home for good things to eat in the end.

Sometimes a wolf suit is all you need for an adventure in your own little yard. Well, a wolf suit, an apple box from BJ’s and a little imagination. Two dowels, an old pillow case and a gallon jug full of sand for a sail doesn’t hurt, but mother nature can provide all the extras you need to turn your box in a private boat.

In a month full of new toys and big trips and dollars spent on experiences and cider donuts and candy and costumes, it’s nice to remember 3 year olds don’t need much to be happy. Just a place where someone loves them best of all.

Costume from PBKids