Growing a Pumpkin Patch is Hard Work.

Birthdays

I just finished designing the invitation for Sylvie's birthday party next month.  "Design" is probably an overstatement.  Syl loves Brown Bear, Brown Bear, so we're doing an Eric Carle theme.  For the invitation, I scanned some Brown Bear fabric and sort of took it from there, no doubt violating many copyrights along the way.  (Hi, Eric Carle's attorneys!  We're super big fans!)  I had the fabric because I'm making her a reversible Brown Bear pinafore that she can wear at the party.  Because, like I always say, if you're going to have a theme, have a theme.

A birthday party is probably overkill for a two-year-old, but we had one for Adam's second birthday, so it doesn't seem fair to deny poor second-born, baby book-less Syl the pleasure of her own.  Plus, Sylvie loves birthday parties.  Just loves them.  Every time she attends one (most of Adam's friends are still at the age where birthday parties are a whole family affair), she runs around singing "Happy day to you!" and babbles about the "happy day cake."  She loves parties, and I can't deny the girl a birthday party.  Plus, I like throwing parties.  Themes!

Chris's birthday was last week.  Sylvie was mainly excited about singing "Happy day to you!" but Adam was beside himself with the surprises we'd planned.  He is into celebrating holidays, and January and February have a boatload: MLK Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, Mardi Gras, George Washington's birthday...  So Adam was beside himself about Chris's birthday falling in the middle of the holiday frenzy.  

In the past, I've always ordered barbecue from different parts of the country for Chris's birthday dinner.  We've had Memphis, Austin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas City, and two kinds of Georgia barbecue, but this year Adam wanted to pick a restaurant for the birthday dinner.  He went with his favorite: Buffalo*!  Because eating out on a weeknight is always fraught, we needed Chris to meet us at the mall, but Adam did not want Chris to know where we were going.  I told him that we'd tell Chris we were going to Chick-fil-A (which is probably Adam's second-favorite restaurant), but then we'd surprise him with Buffalo.  We parked the car and were walking to the mall entrance and I asked Adam how he was going to let Chris know we weren't going to CFA.  

I asked, "So, you'll run up and say, 'Surprise! We're really going to Buffalo!', right?" Adam was aghast.

"NO! That would ruin the surprise! I will tell him to close his eyes and then we will walk him to Buffalo and walk in and say, 'Surprise! We're at Buffalo!'"

A subtle difference, indeed.

So, Chris turned 39, complete with pie, ice cream, presents, and a big surprise for dinner.

*Buffalo = Ted's Montana Grill.  Adam has always called it Buffalo because, at least at the one we visit, there's a big stuffed buffalo head on the wall.

Redux

When Adam was little, he liked to rock.  Thankfully, that phase didn't last too long.  Flash to this year, where poor Sylvie's sleep has suffered because of her recurrent ear infections (as of this week, she's had 13 since December 2008.  We visit the ENT in early March.).  This week, she's been waking up around 5:30.  To keep her from waking Adam with her predawn shenanigans, one of us will go in there to change her diaper and rock her for a little while, and this morning when I went in there, she plopped her head on my shoulder as soon as I picked her up from the crib and moaned, "I want to rock!  Want to rock!"  

Another thing that Adam did when he was little, but hasn't done in a while, is demand that Chris remove his jacket as soon as he entered the house in the evenings.  We quickly deduced that Adam had figured that jacket off = Dada is home and intends to stay put.  A week or so ago, Chris came in from work and Syl ran up to him squealing, "Jacket off!  Jacket off!"  I get it, too - probably because I go to a lot more meetings now than I did when Adam was small.  It gets tricky, though, when I'm wearing a cardigan over a camisole and Sylvie demands that I remove my jacket.  She doesn't really get the whole point of cardigans yet, I guess.  I should probably take her on a field trip to Talbot's.