Alex is Fourrrrrrrr!!!

OMG. Alex is four! And boy does he know it. We've been counting down to his birthday since mid-January, that's not even a lie. Since he is such a regular on the birthday party circuit, he was oh-so-aware that his turn was coming. Luckily he did not have any huge requests so I did what I wanted to do which is invite MY friends over lol. Between us we ended up with 8 boys ages 4-6, from 5:30 - 7:30 pm on Friday, March 16. At our house. Accordingly, I sustained what I'm certain was an alarmingly high blood pressure the entire time.

So let's talk about Alex's day! He went to school with his Birthday Boy shirt on and some brownies for his class and came home wearing a crown. Naturally.

Then he got to open some presents with Jen...

He took a nap to recharge and then we set up the party.

You know what is funny? Hysterical, in fact. Somewhere in a deep part of my brain I was like "Oh, I wonder if all the boys will want to do a craft together. Let me just set some markers out so they can sit and color when they get here."

BAHAHAHAHA! Even I can't believe I ever thought that. I'm embarrassed to admit it. No, what happened was, the boys all tore around the house, wielding swords, fighting, hitting the balloons, rolling around, pillaging the toybox and it was chaos in its purest form. Each kid cried at least once, the moms refereed between precious sips of wine and if that doesn't sound like the perfect party I don't know what does.

While the boys were confined to their seats, we sang (tell me that is not the most enthusiastic cheer you have ever heard at the end :) my heart melts) and then we did these confetti wands that I thought would be fun (and were!) but cleaning up after them was insane. Try to pick up all the sand off the beach and that's basically the equivalent. Here is the video of the fun and here is the video of the savage aftermath (I selfie'ed it!). You guys, I'm still finding these little blue pieces of paper. They even made it into the toilet.  

We did a funny group photo:

and then it was over! People started to get their shoes on and guess what happened. The goodie bags came out and all hell broke loose for the 34th time that evening.

Shoes came off, playtime started again, and the moms were like, welp, guess we should have more wine ;)

Overall it was just what I thought it was going to be (madness) but also the perfect thing for Alex. He had everyone's attention and was so, so happy. We did family time afterwards,

and by the time I cleaned everything up I felt like this balloon.

Just dead on the floor.

Alex's pediatrician appointment is next week so I'll do the nitty gritty stats post after that, but for life as we know it going forward, Alex is...

!!!!!!