Nora's Third Birthday Party

Nora greatly anticipated her birthday this year, which is something I wasn't expecting from an almost-three year old. I think it's the Zeke influence in her life....he love love loves birthdays, and he is the one that showed her her birthday on the calendar. She can recognize her name ('It's my N-o-r-a, mom!), so she immediately claimed the whole month of August as hers. One night Zeke and I were talking and I said something about my birthday. Nora corrected me: 'No mom, my birthday, not yours. It's my August!'

Nora has a cousin who is 13 days older, and while we were at her party, Nora asked if she got to open any presents. I explained to her that this was Brielle's party, but her turn was coming later. That satisfied her, and she looked forward even more to her party and presents after that. 

Grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins did a great job picking gifts this year. Nora loves them all and we have had so much fun playing Little People and mermaids and blocks in the past couple of weeks. And she really does love her new clothes from her grandmas, even though she just dumped them in my lap and moved on to other presents at the party.

Draper and Carrie sent a package, and so we have also played a lot of magnetic 'paper' dolls too. 

Mom and Dad got Nora her very own piggy bank. She was with us when we found it, and she picked the color, even though she didn't know we bought it. In this picture she is saying something similar to 'A pig! Oh yeah, from yesterday [two weeks ago].'

Airplane cake. Like Zeke's train cake earlier this year, we have three plane candle holders, so it was meant to be. And she's always been an airplane girl. And she is in love with the movie Planes.

Miss Nora was also excited to blow out her candles. She didn't blow quite hard enough, so she got two of them after several tries. Aaron got the other one.

Mmmm, ice cream and frosting (the cake under the frosting got mostly ignored). And she had to have her planes on her pink plate. 

Nora makes us laugh and gives us lots of cuddles. She says and does the cutest things, and also has a pretty distinctive dirty look. She takes good care of all of us -  her 'mother hen' nurturing side comes out quite often!  Love this little lady so much!