Tulip Festival

I'm a week behind posting these, but better late than never, right? Mother's Day was beautiful here. Warm, sunny--perfect day for a family walk to check out the Tulip Festival.

The "day" part of birthday is misleading. . .

Pack up the party favors and put away the dinosaur cake pan for another year—the multi-stage celebration known as Henry’s 4th birthday is finally over! Somehow, the anniversary of our dear child’s birth has become less like Christmas (lots of preparation leading to a one-day spasm of gifts, treats, food and song) and more like Hanukkah (ceremonies, events and presents, presents, presents spread over many days). Henry had his first birthday cake back in April, when my parents were in town, and will have Cake #4 when he travels to California to visit Tom’s parents. (I guess, technically, the celebrating isn’t over yet, but I’m not going on the trip, so my role is finished.)

Cake #2 was served at his birthday party, which due to multiple conflicts took place a week before his actual birthday; Cake #3 was enjoyed with his preschool classmates on his actual, calendar birthday. So, phew! I have been very busy pulling together all this celebrating. Of course we had a dinosaur-themed party with dino plates, dino decorations, a dino cookie decorating activity, and—most importantly—a dino cake. A dino cake that I made myself. Woo-hoo! It was fun. Henry was thrilled with his party, no one went home hurt or in tears (although there were tears during the party from one kid who was clearly having a bad day), and for the third year running I was able to host almost a dozen small children in my home without having the place trashed.

We got Henry a dino bike for his present. It’s pretty big for him now, but he’s doing an admirable job riding it with the training wheels on. He’s not the most physically adventurous/reckless child, so I imagine it will be quite awhile before we take the training wheels off. Now we just have to get him a new, more grown-up style helmet—the one he has is uncomfortable due to its heavy padding (seriously--it looks like something you’d wear to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorbike, not a helmet to protect a kid from a 12-inch fall off a tricycle)!

Enjoying Cake #3
Off for a ride

Hair Apparent

Dexter is now 9 months old, meaning he's been on the outside just as long as he was on the inside. We're now completely into what I happily refer to as the Lunatic Monkey phase of infant development, as he no longer sits still for more than 2.3 seconds and gets into anything and everything, especially if it is something he's not supposed to have. As a baby, Henry was never one to put stuff in his mouth (he didn't want to risk that it might be food). Childproofing was pretty simple. Pack away the CDs, remove a few dangerous items, and voila. But with Dexter is's a full-time job. First, we have this whole new category of crap (i.e. toys) littering the house that we didn't have when Henry was toddling around. And Dexter is one of those babies who shoves everything into his pie hole, including, but not limited to, small magnetic toys (aah!), paper (I can live with that), bits of old food he finds under the kitchen table (gross), and--his personal favorite--dust bunnies. Ick. I feel like i spend half my waking hours (well, the ones not at work) fishing stuff out of his mouth. He's starting to pull himself up on everything, getting more adventurous every day. And, he's growing hair. He even has a little wavy curl developing at the back of his neck. It's going to be interesting to see what all this hair looks like when it's grown in because he has this crazy double crown that looks like it will be sending his hair up into a natural "fauxhawk" or some other crazy 'do that will make strangers suspect that I'm the kind of trendoid mom who uses her kids to make a fashion statement (if it does end up being a fauxhawk, I guess thee statement will be something like, "My mom is 2 years behind the times"). Or, maybe it will just end up being curly. Time will tell.

He may be a monkey, but what a sweet little monkey he is!