Cannon is three!

Cannon turns three today. It's hard to imagine we ever lived without him.

Lately as motivation to get him to go down for nap time and bed time, I've been telling him "Dinosaur Train" stories. Inspiration for them comes from a TV show of the same name, but the stories aren't anything similar. In fact, with his recent interest in pirates, our stories typically begin with the dinosaur train picking him up at our house and going straight to the Pirate Island restaurant in Orem, which we went to last Monday for FHE. There, the pirate skeletons are found to be in some type of distress that often requires going back in time to the dinosaur age and rescuing Jack Sparrow. I ask him as we lay down where he wants the dinosaur train to go. At first he didn't have much to say, but now he goes off for a while giving me a detailed description of what he expects in the story: Jack Sparrow, triceratops, T-rex, the Black Pearl, skeletons at the pirate restaurant, etc.

It's great telling stories to three-year-olds. They don't care that you have horrible story telling skills as long as your story involves the things they're interested in and you tell it with lots of enthusiasm. Yesterday when we told Cannon it was nap time he was not at all interested. Without saying a word, I walked over to the front door and put my ear against it, trying to determine whether I was really hearing what I thought I was. Cannon became silent and watched me, quizzically. "I think I hear something!" I said in a whisper. "Do you hear it?" He didn't know what to say. "Oh my goodness. I think I hear something coming!"

"What is it?"

"I think it's... it's... the DINOSAUR TRAIN!"

"Oh, YEAH! I hear it too!" He is all smiles now and terribly excited.

"Quick! Hurry! We need to get in bed before the dinosaur train gets here!"

"Oh no! Hurry! We have to do it!"

"We have to go potty first! Hurry, let's go!" I tell him, realizing I may be pressing my luck a bit.

"Okay!" He runs into the bathroom and goes potty, then runs around and hops into bed. Yes! I am a genius! It has never been so easy to get him down for nap time. I don't know how much longer the interest will last, though. It's getting harder to think up new plot lines that involve a T-rex, a triceratops, Jack Sparrow, the black pearl, the dinosaur train, and the Pirate Island restaurant.

On Saturday we had a family birthday party for Cannon. Vard and Becky and family, Lincoln and Dorothee and family, Ardian and his girls, Evan, Uncle Bob, Mary, Grandma Wiscomb, and Matt and Carol and family all came over. We held it in the Gables clubhouse. Molly of course did a fabulous job organizing and decorating. I really didn't do much at all to help except pick up the pizzas. Molly had helium balloons, homemade root beer (which, unfortunately, didn't turn out very well--we'll have to practice!), brownies frosted as jack-o-lanterns and Jack Skellington, a pumkin pinata, and a pin-the-head on Jack Skellington game. She invited everyone to wear costumes, so Cannon got to wear his triceratops costume, which we think is adorable and he thinks is totally awesome and intimidating. Noah had a little triceratops costume to match. I'll try to post some pictures soon.