a celebration is an order: colston turned fwee!

earlier this month, our youngest, colston, celebrated his third birthday. or as he would say, he turned "fwee." colston has a little bit of a lisp, but i'm not too worried about it. his mother, on the other hand, sometimes acts as if it's so outlandish that any minute, charles xavier is going to appear out of nowhere with a white haired black chick and ask if colston can join his school for gifted mutants. babe, it's not that pronounced... ok, maybe it is, but he'll grow out of it and if he doesn't, i'm sure he has a bright future as the x-man who beats down bad guys by furiously amplifying the sound waives of his lisp at them. in the meantime, no sense in giving the poor kid a complex. thank goodness he doesn't read the blog.

the birthday was nice and low key... at least for everyone but the evening's entertainer: me. we only invited family and a neighborhood buddy of his or two, but i had the wondrous idea of preparing frozen hot chocolate, frozen bananas and balboa bars rather than the traditional stuff. the idea sounded great in theory, but i have since learned that balboa bars aren't that easy to replicate and since it was my idea, it was all on me, but, as usual, aim made for a great help-mate and did all the decorating and the like.

for those unfamiliar with the term balboa bars, these are one of my all time favorite ice cream novelties. one reason the term may not ring a bell is because you can/should really only eat these things on balboa island in newport, california. basically, they're an ice cream bar, dipped in chocolate that freezes into a shell, but not before you choose a topping to cover it in (oreos, nuts, almonds, sprinkles, etc. fyi: almonds are the best). aim and is spent the weekend before the b-day in newport where i had my fair share of balboa bars and, as such, we were both channeling the deliciousness of this delicacy and thought we'd give it a whirl in lv. long story short, the bars weren't bad but they weren't great. the frozen hot chocolate was much better and the frozen bananas were pretty tasty, too.

back to colston...

it was kind of funny, but colston had a black eye on his birthday. we don't know how it happened since it was inflicted while my parents were watching him. don't ask, don't tell, but you can see the remnants below. the i've posted span the course of about three days which is approximately the amount of time we spent celebrating cold stone's birthday in one way or another. i especially like the shot of coles the day he apparently got a hold of the gel and try to pull of his best glen danzig impression. what's more is he's guarding that truck and trailer toy he's sitting by in the pic with a scowl that no fool would want to mess with... and if any particular fool did, i would pity him. just ask caleb. joking, kind of... funny thing is, jameson had a black eye, too, when we got back from cali (word on the street is that caleb is responsible for both of them). it's an eye for an eye thing in this brotherhood.

bottom line, colton is inexplicably adorable. i don't know if it's the cheeks, his belly, his little voice or the fact that he's probably the most jovial toddler you'll ever meet, but he is seriously one of the most endearing souls on the planet. the kid is ticklish on literally every spot of his body and it's almost impossible to resist tickling him on a daily basis. his laugh is not only contagious, but infectious.

colston is also a very smart dude having learned to talk, count and recite the alphabet at a pretty early age. he picks things up quickly and is constantly trying to keep up with his older bros... which he's not too bad at, except that he's not near the fiend for speed that they are. i remember the time at disneyland when i was going to rock the tea cups out of this world when all of a sudden i looked over at colston and against the backdrop of blurry park-goers i saw what looked like a giant tomato that was about to pop in place of where colston's head used to be. i immediately slowed down and learned that he's just not into that kind of stuff... fine by me, less likely to break his back at powell that way. in summary, we're luky to c-town on board at the cooperfive and i can't imagine what life would be like today had i not put my special dance moves on aim that special night some three years and nine months ago. she never knew what hit her.

ok, getting serious again... the aforementioned is great and all, but i have to admit the achievement i am most proud of when it comes to colston is the fact that he followed in the footsteps of his indefatigable dad by potty training himself. yes, zombies, it's time to clear-up the urban legend you all have likely heard that the blogmaster potty trained himself... it's not an urban legend, it's true. consider it cleared-up. and just like his father before him, c-town decided one day he'd had enough of the diaper life and bam all of a sudden we're saving like $40 a month not having to buy disposable swaddling loin cloths.

queue joke about the blogmaster being 6, 10 or even 15 years old when he potty trained himself.

to the contrary, my friends... i've heard it all before, besides, those jokes won't fly in these parts now that i have some proof of my accolade which proof is none other than the flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood heeding the manifest destiny of his genetic make-up by teaching himself to use the loo at the tender age of two. it's in the dna, zombies. accept it. teaches it in the schools... there's science in that logic and, thus, it cannot be anymore disputed than say global warming, err cooling, err climate change.

time for the pics...