Happy Third Birthday Jamie!

It was Jamie's third birthday on Saturday. Jamie is my second child – our baby, but certainly not a baby any more.

It was a lovely day for all of us. We had an afternoon tea party for him (mainly grown-up family, with a couple other kids too) with some afternoon tea food, lots of presents, lollies and chocolate birthday cake. I believe he was quite happy with the day.

One of the presents we gave him is some playdough (or playdoh as the proprietary stuff is called) and all sorts of playdough extrusion and molding implements and he's having heaps of fun with it. He really enjoys playing with the home made stuff, and we thought this would be one of the last chances we could get him something like this where he would enjoy it before he grew out of it. In just only three days, nearly all the bright colours have been mashed together into that sludgy brown-grey, but that hasn't seemed to spoiled his enjoyment of the stuff.

My sister came down from Brisbane for the weekend and it was great to have her with us, especially for Jamie's birthday. And that's not only because she rescue me from getting stuck with the chocolate cake recipe my mum had given me over the phone. I think it helped that my sister had done that recipe before, whereas I hadn't! Honestly, it was a relief, and kind of nice to have my big sister there to boss me around again – for a bit.

Jamie had asked for a chocolate cake for his birthday, but it was hard to tell if he really enjoyed it. Perhaps he was too full from all the other party food. It's hard to find a nice, though simple, choc cake recipe that kids will also like. I may have another go at this one and see if it he takes to it at some other time. If you have any ideas for a good kid-friendly chocolate cake recipe, do let me know.

The photo above is from a couple of weekends back - not his birthday. I still haven't uploaded the birthday party photos to flickr, but when I do I'll be back here to update with the photos so stay tuned.

But from the photo you can get an idea of his cheeky, vibrant, fun-loving character. He is a really sweet-natured child, caring, loving, generous and sharing, and usually full of cuddles and hugs, though of late he has been developing his independence and learning to identify himself discretely from us, his parents. And his big brother! I think you can imagine what that can be like. Happy Birthday Jamie! We love you very much!

I have been remiss in keeping my blogging up to date, so I hope this little news will explain one of the reasons I've been so busy, despite there being so much news to share. I hope things get better on the blogging front soon. Bear with me.