Third children

You know that e-mail that the same friend sends you every 6 months, with the subject line that says fwd:fwd: fwd: fwd: this made me think of you! LOL!

The one that compares your first baby with your third. Like how you name your first baby when you're 6 months pregnant and the third by his first birthday.

So I ask you: Do third children really get the short end of the stick?

True story: When Jake went for his Kindergarten evaluation, the teacher handed him some scissors and a piece of paper and asked him to cut a straight line. Jake looked at the scissors and then looked her straight in the eye and said " I've never seen these before in my life." I was mortified; I mean why was I spending all this money on pre-school if they weren't going to teach him to use scissors?

Eli, however, was born knowing how to use scissors. In less than a minute he can push a chair to my desk, find the carefully-hidden scissors (1), move the chair to the pantry, reach the highest shelf, find the carefully-hidden cookies, neatly cut open the package, and help himself to an even dozen.

Point goes the the third child.

Sure there's the issue of hand-me-downs:

It matches his pink hand-me-down car seat nicely.

Enough said. Point goes to first-born.(2)

Tie breaker: Birthday parties.

Noa's second birthday party was a barnyard extravaganza complete with hay rides, pony rides and a barn shaped cake. We invited 60 of our closest friends and Noa wore a boutique outfit embroidered with farm animals.



Eli's second birthday included his three best friends(3), an Elmo video and moms drinking bloody marys in the kitchen. A freak snowstorm closed schools and bumped the guest count to include nine siblings and a handful of neighbors.

I wore my fancy slippers for the occasion

Remember Noa's barnyard cake?

He looks happy now but I suspect this picture will be used against me in the future

For Jake's third birthday party we rented out a children's museum. Unfortunately the museum has since closed so for Eli's third birthday we planned something similar to his second.

Deja vu all over again

Aha! You think that I didn't even take pictures of Eli's third birthday and tried to pass off pictures of his second party instead. Wrong ! I spent a long time looking for pictures of his party and couldn't find them and then remembered that his birthday is actually next month and the party hasn't even happened yet. So there.

Game, set and match to first child. But don't you worry about Eli. I have a suspicion he's going to be fine.

1) That PCSguy would never be able to find
2) And yes, my first-born was a boy but we were way too poor back then to afford a Hanna Andersson snowsuit.
3) Otherwise known as the same-aged children of my best friends.

Special thanks to Donna for the fantastic black and white shot that totally captures Eli's personality. Check her out, she does brilliant work !