Our Baby is Four

On Tuesday, Teo turned four. It's hard to believe our baby is four. He had a wonderful birthday. On Tuesday, the actual day of his birthday, I went in to his preschool class and spent recess with him out on the playground. He got to show me around and tell me what he does at school, and he was very pleased. Then he gave out play-dough that I had brought for each of his classmates. Later I offered to take him out to lunch, but after a weekend with Lola and Lolo in town I guess he'd had enough of eating out. He just wanted to come home and watch tv and play on pbskids.org on my laptop. I made Nannie's Hot Milk Cupcakes and let him have one after lunch. Before Laura came to babysit, he opened his present from his aunt Aileen, the Zoob car design kit. He was psyched and played with it a lot of the afternoon.

Then after work we all converged on the house and had cupcakes together and Teo opened one of his presents from us, a subscription to Your Big Backyard magazine. I ordered this for him after the first Scholastic book order came home from school in his backpack this year and he talked with glee about his "mazagine." He was much more interested in the binoculars that came with the magazine ("your free gift with every subscription") but we read the magazine together at bedtime that night and he really liked it and also loved when the December issue showed up two days later.

The next morning I let both the boys have cupcakes for breakfast (birthday cake for breakfast the day after your birthday has become solid tradition for us; it's a cousin of my longstanding pie-for-breakfast-the-day-after-Thanksgiving tradition). I also replaced his car seat with a booster seat just like Luke's (after late-night internet research to be sure of the statutes), which led to the biggest smile I've ever seen on Teo before 10:00 in the morning! I made a big deal out of unlocking the special child safety lock on his car door so he can open it himself from the inside (complete with serious conversation about how four-year-olds are old enough to know that you never open a car door when the car is moving. That day on the way home from school I remarked on how big he looked in his booster seat, and I told him he was growing up too fast and he had to slow down. He said quite simply, "I can't, Mommy." Awww...

Then Saturday came and with it our long-anticipated lunch with Sarah, Cyndee, Caleb & Abe at Rainforest Cafe. I had suggested to Teo that he could have a party with all of his friends from his preschool class, but he said this is what he wanted to do to celebrate his birthday! In the morning, Tina made an amazing yellow cake from the Best Recipes book along with chocolate frosting that was made from an entire package of melted Girardelli milk chocolate morsels. We went to the mall, which was insane, and the boys amused themselves in the gift shop while we waited for a table. The boys inhaled their overpriced and mediocre food and then stood on the booth to stare into the giant fishtank right next to our table for a long time. Then back to the house for cake, ice-cream and presents, and best of all, hours of playing with Cay and Abe, a rare treat. They all had a blast. The treat bags we put together for them were a big hit, especially the tattoo pens (see later post). We also included flashing, light-up ring pops, plastic harmonicas in their own cases, candy dispensers shaped like Wii remotes that spit out candy when you pull the "b" button, and glow necklaces.

Despite the stresses of this time of year, it was a wonderful day with wonderful friends. We always feel like poor Teo kind of gets a raw deal with his birthday falling when it does. I work so little in the summer that it's easy to do crazy things in preparation for Luke's birthday (like drawing and coloring a dozen giant Pokemon posters by hand), but by the time Teo's comes we're all just crazed. But I think we did right by him this year without losing our minds or breaking the bank.