Tommy's Party!!!

We did it! 16 kids (4 and under), a two bedroom apartment, a gluten-free cake, 68 balloons, two tents and two tubes, and a ton of candy equals one great party!

I felt a little weird throwing a party for Tommy at his young age, but we are making up for lost time here, so I wanted it to be memorable. Also, right now birthdays are all fun for him- sometimes kids who were adopted have very mixed feelings about birthdays as they grow up- so I want to make these early ones all joy. To that end, I invited the kids from the nursery at bible study (the gang he hangs out with every week), and it turned out to be quite a few. I am so thankful it didn't rain. The weather was gorgeous so we were able to use our back and side yards for wiggle room- so necessary with that many kids.

We started out with playtime outside while we waited for everyone to arrive.

Then we came in for a buffet of gluten-free snacks: fruit, rice chex, puffins, tortilla chips, salsa, guacamole- all of Tommy's favorites. The kids all crammed into our living room, and many of them sat around our little coffee table. Tommy sat in the center and, unbeknownst to me,treated everyone else's plate as his own personal buffet. I was a little embarrassed. I got him a perfectly good plate of food, but omitted strawberries because he had eaten a ton of them at breakfast, and I didn't want him to get a strawberry rash. Yet, a few minutes into "snack time" I glanced down at his plate and noticed a pile of strawberries. Magic! Apparently as soon as he settled in he proceeded to take a strawberry off of every single kid's plate at the table. After finishing those off he helped himself to the chex and puffins on the plates around him, even though his plate was full! My little scavenger. You can take the boy out of the orphanage, but it is hard to take the orphanage out of the boy.

Then we hunted for goodie bags, and did a big group picture. It actually went pretty well, considering.

The cake was actually good, and Tommy sort-of liked it. He enjoyed blowing out the candle at least.

Then we went inside to play in the balloon room. It totally worked.

Last but not least we did presents. Tommy is going to have a ton of fun in the next few weeks- he loved everything, and we had to take each thing away so he would move on.

While the idea of the party was a bit confusing to Tommy, and at times, difficult, because he is not so fond of seeing other kids play with his toys, overall he had fun. And fun was all I really cared about.