Turning five.
Not to me, of course. Like every mother before me, I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday. He was a surprise in so many ways. He showed up in my womb 6 months after his brother exited. His father thought he'd be a girl. His mother thought he'd wait until the next day, his due date before showing up. Instead, he gave a one hour warning shot. In fact, 20 minutes before he was born, when his father walked in the door, after leaving his just-heated lunch at his desk at work, he (his father) declared that I was having this baby really soon. To which I responded with a "Don't say that! You don't know! I don't want to get discouraged! I don't want to do this!" The nurse was the same one who helped deliver his older brother. He had red hair. He was easier than his older brother, something no one seems to think can happen when your first born is Mr. Laid-back. And the Doctor couldn't believe he'd missed the whole thing.
But the reason it's been a long time in coming is not because five years is a long time to raise a child. It's because he's been wanting to be five for the past 15 months. When C was turning 5, S started insisting that he was too. No amount of arguing would convince him otherwise. He seemed to forget about it after his 4th birthday. Until J turned 2 in June. Then the birthday discussions started again. They were all about "my next birthday". C turned 6 in November and in S's eyes the birthday party was spectacular.
Presents! Balloons! Kids! Cake!
So we started to discuss birthdays in great detail on a daily basis. For three months! We looked at the calendar and talked about how many days and weeks and months it was going to be before his birthday.
So if you imagine that when, in the same week, S got conjunctivitis and some kind of vomiting disease, postponing his birthday party was catastrophic for him....
You'd be wrong.
That didn't really phase him. (remember? he's Mr. More-laid-back.)
But turning the calendar to March?
That made him cry.
But we made up for it.
Enjoy!
How he spent his birthday. Poor guy.
(he also had chapped skin around his eyes and nose)
His birthday party a week and a half later.They made paper airplanes and tested them in flight, down our hallway.
(Did we ever tell you we have a fireplace in our hallway?Yup, we do.)
Playing a game with the airplanes they made.
Playing "Pass the Parcel". It's big in the UK and Australia (so we've heard).
S opened presents.
And blew out his candle three times!
(because another kid kept "helping him")
The end.
3 comments:
Happy (late) birthday S! We were thinking of him on the 21st and remembering that he and Jackson share that day, one year apart.
They do grow up fast, don't they? ::sniffle::
How does pass the package work? I'll bet they liked the paper airplanes best! Happy Birthday, young man. Joelle wishes she could have been there. When we told her you turned 5, she asked when her birthday is. We explained it is not for 8 more months...
"Pass the Parcel" (say it with an English accent) (the lone girl at the party is half Australian. Her Dad said it's popular there. But we first heard about it from people that had just lived in England for two years.) is played by wrapping a package with a "treat" inside (we used little plastic sea creatures) and then keep wrapping a "treat" into each layer, one for every child at the party. Then you pass it as the music plays and when the music stops, that person gets to unwrap a layer. Everybody should end up with one present.
Personally, I'd wait until they were a little older. C and S caught on better, but all the other kids at the party were younger (3 and 4 year olds) and it was a little hard to explain to them. Nobody wanted to pass it. They wanted to "keep it".
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