Sheridan's Birthday Bash

This post is long overdue... 

Sheridan had 28 friends - TWENTY-EIGHT toddlers and infants - take over our backyard. It was SO much fun - I set up 9 different stations around the backyard so the kids would have lots of opportunities to explore and have fun. We had everything from moon sand to painting, water play to ball pits, handprint souvenirs to oobleck (which, by the way, was more of a hit with the parents than the kids!). The invitations told everyone to "dress to get messy" - and we meant it! 

I'm not going to write much, just let the pictures (and there's LOTS of 'em!) tell the story :) 

I loooooooove this cake!

Simple, yummy food :)

Party favors :)

We even had an infant play area for the babies!

Sheridan greeted everyone and walked them back to the party

Painting was probably the favorite activity among the kids!

The sand table was a good place for the little ones to congregate :)

Each child had a canvas square they could decorate however they wanted to take home as a souvenir

Moon sand - you can mold it, it never dries out, and always returns to "sand" - a weird consistency and great for sensory play!

Homemade, organic, oatmeal play-dough

We also had music at the party... as you can see, Sheridan was eager for the music to start!

I love how these three are playing together

Music time!

This is probably my favorite picture... here's Sheridan standing in the middle of everyone, shaking his booty to his favorite song. It's like he's on Solid Gold and he's dancing for a prize!

Nonna feeding Sheridan cake

Of course, his Becca was there

All in all, it was a fantastic party. It was so much fun. I'm sad Gary had to miss it, but I'm glad he insisted that we go ahead with the party. 

The children love it. Some partied until they literally passed out...

Others didn't want to leave, even after 3 hours of hard play they were still going at it...

I'm just glad everyone had so much fun and Sheridan got to celebrate his birthday with so many friends!

Happy second birthday, Buddy!

artBEAST

I took Sheridan to an art studio (artBEAST) designed for kids today. And man did he LOVE it. I put some clothes on him that he's about to outgrow (so who cares how dirty they get?!).

We had too much fun painting, playing with clay, washing baby dolls in bathtubs, and playing with sand/gravel/tractors to take pictures, but I did get a few...

Here's Sheridan checkin' out another boy painting (obviously Sheridan had already worked on a few masterpieces of his own - including his shirt and face - you should have seen his tray before I cleaned it!).


The cool thing was that Sheridan could partake in EVERY activity. At times he would stand and paint at the easel or on the wall (yes, they let you paint on one of the walls!), other times he would crawl around and sit on the ground and work, or he'd sit in one of the booster seats, or he'd kneel at a table.

Here he is with his gal-pal Gracie. She's just a few months younger than Sheridan and SUPER cute!


Gracie liked painting, too :)


A close up of Sheridan's self-portrait...


And Grace painting at the easel...


This place is SO awesome. It's all about sensory play, and letting kids do whatever they want in terms of art and activities. They have two more floors that we didn't even get to - Sheridan loved the arts and crafts in this room and the water/sand/gravel activities outside in the courtyard.

And... drum roll please... Sheridan only had 2 brief pop-eye moments - here's an example of what that looks like:


He does this when he's... shall we say... "not pleased." I've written briefly before about how Sheridan has a hard time around other kids. I figured we'd give artBEAST a try and if he couldn't handle it, we'd simply leave. But he LOVED it! And only twice whimpered for a few seconds. Other than that, he crawled around with the other kids - he didn't care that 10 kids were running circles around him. And talk about LOUD! He did great today - I think he was so interested in the activities, and watching the other children play, that he forgot to be upset about it all :)

I'm so proud of Buddy. And so glad we have a cool new activity that we can do together!

Um, I think he wore himself out...


Another thing to love about this place (like I needed more!): The proceeds from ArtBeast fund programs for homeless children and youth. Every penny raised at ArtBeast goes to one of two places: back into artBEAST or into Tubman House, a residential community for homeless youth and children.