We celebrated Max's birthday on Monday - the big 3! It was a fun-filled day that started with Kenny singing Happy Birthday outside his door when it was "wake up time." When he opened the door, Max said, "Is it MY birthday?" "Is my birthday downstairs?" He came flying down the steps to find some presents, some balloons and a special birthday breakfast waiting for him. He got some new "Froggy" books and a watch and a new letter movie. He was so excited! He and Jack both devoured their chocolate chip muffin breakfast (so much so that Jack told me later he was not hungry at lunch time at all and barely ate anything!) and it was off to school to share cookies (pronounced koo - keys by Max) and brownies with his friends. When I'd asked if he wanted to take cookies or cupcakes to his friends that day he said he wanted to take cookies and brownies and let his friends choose what they wanted. This child isn't one to do what everyone else does - he marches to the beat of his own drum. Jack would never have chosen anything but "pupcakes." Anyway, when I picked him up in the afternoon, he was hot, sweaty, covered in sand (the sign of a fun-filled day!), and really excited to go get what was left of his cookies and brownies and eat them again. I asked if he wanted to go to dinner and he exclaimed that he wanted to go to CiCi's! Being a city kid, we don't really have any of those close by, and let's face it, it wasn't at the top of my list of places to go, so I offered him a few closer by Carytown options and he chose "Burgers and Fries." We all had a big, yummy dinner and then headed home for some ice cream sundaes! He'd gotten some packages in the mail by the time we got home that he was very anxious to open. Cousin Dillyn had sent the coolest "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" ship and toys that both boys went crazy over. We had to drag them off to take a bath and snuggle up to read our new books. It was an exhausting day, at least from my perspective, but I think Roni would consider it one of the best he's had so far, so it was well worth it.
Roni is so full of life. He's wild and crazy and definitely all boy. He bumbles and tumbles and isn't graceful. He loves to get dirty. He loves to play in the sand and loves anything involving a ball. At the playground he usually wants to swing and he wants to do it all by himself. He can get on and off the swing himself and knows how to pump his legs to get going really high. He is pretty picky about his clothes and wants to pick out his shirt most every day. At 3 Jack was all about dinosaurs but Max has no interest. And he doesn't like most of the dinosaur shirts that we have. He will eat really almost anything, as long as he wants it at that moment. There are few things he really doesn't like, but what he wants today and what he wants tomorrow likely will be completely different. He usually prefers whatever Jack isn't having, which means I sometimes get to make 3 meals at night. (And before anyone tells me that I just shouldn't, Jack is a very picky eater and has big issues with texture and consistency. So much so that he will actually gag and throw up his dinner if it's not what he expects or wants. It's something we've battled for 5 years now and I've tried every suggestion there is, but the literature says not to push them at this age, and it doesn't mean they won't ever eat anything else, he just needs time.) Most of the time, however, Max will eat whatever Kenny and I are eating, which makes it easy. His favorites are still probably fruits - he loves watermelon and strawberries. He also loves yogurt. He's a good eater. Most days at school he eats whatever Mr. Glen fixes, which is wonderful. He sleeps really well - still takes long 4 hour naps on the weekend and 2 hours at school. He goes right to bed at night around 7:45 and we don't hear from him until 6:30 or 7 unless he's had a bad dream, which is pretty rare. He still sleeps with a paci, and a band-aid. He's gotten VERY picky about his bandaids in his old age - he doesn't care about the picture but he doesn't like the "scratchy" kind, which are the band-aid brand, because they are too sticky. He sticks the band-aid to his forehead most nights while we read books and then once he's in bed he takes it off and moves it between his fingers. If it's too sticky, he has trouble getting it off and one morning he even woke with 3 little gashes in his forehead from a "scratchy" bandaid incident.
And there was more celebrating to do - that weekend we had his party. It was the first one he kind of understood and he was VERY excited. We kept it to the usual family and close friends but that's probably the last time we'll get away with that since he'd been invited to a few of his classmates' parties just before his own and I'm sure that will continue to be a trend in the coming year. He loved every second of his party.
He'd been asking for a pretend kitchen because every day when we went upstairs to pick Jack up from Yellow Birds, he begged to play in their pretend kitchen. By the time I was picking him up however, the pretend kitchen stuff was usually all cleaned up for the day and Max was so disappointed. So a pretend kitchen seemed the perfect gift...that is until we set out to assemble it the night before the party and it was in literally 80000 pieces. I wasn't sure the pretend kitchen would be ready before Christmas really, but somehow, we got it done, in the wee hours of the morning, and it was a BIG hit. See that big thing covered up with a blanket on the right side of the room? That's the kitchen. It was there the entire time he had the party and opened gifts and he didn't even notice!
Thanks to all who came out and made his day extra special!
