It's potty time

Aaron has begin potty training, or "toilet learning" as some prefer to call it. Aaron doesn't care what we call it, he's just excited. He clearly knows a lot about it, probably from watching his peers at school; he already asks to take off his diaper, sits patiently, and talks while he sits about what might happen. "Maybe some pee come out," he says, "Maybe some poop. Maybe just wait." So far we just wait. But his understanding of the process is what creates the opportunity, yes?

Jordan, meanwhile, has a bathroom development as well, which is that he is no longer comfortable using a public women's room with me. If I'm the one that needs to go, he will wait by the front door (just inside is minimally acceptable for both of us). If it's his turn, he chooses to use the men's room, and I'm the one that waits... outside. Last time I was in that situation, I got occasional reports from nice guys leaving the bathroom: "He's just washing his hands now," that kind of thing. That was helpful, but it's still tricky for me, because public men's rooms have a less than stellar reputation. On the other hand, I want to respect Jordan's preference. Hopefully most of the time, Dale will be available.

Weeklies

I know these come out being more like bimonthlies, but oh well.

Jordan's birthday, in three parts

We made it! We achieved all the birthday events! Yahoo! Jordan had three separate celebrations - a family event at home, a ceremony at school, and a party with friends at the beach. The family event was on his actual birthday, Thursday. For dinner he requested (seriously) pesto pasta, broccoli, and chips with hummus. I've been making a lot of pesto lately with the basil from our yard, and the kids love it, so that did not entirely surprise me, nor did the chips and hummus. The broccoli, I found out later, was so that "everyone would have something they liked." Very thoughtful of him. He does occasionally eat some broccoli, but not on Thursday.

His cake for Thursday was (at his request) lemon-blackberry. (He actually asked for lemon-blackberry-raspberry-sour-apple, but I told him he had to choose only two.) The cake was lemon with a blackberry swirl, blackberry jam filling, and lemon buttercream frosting. Very delicious. I decorated it with purple basil from the yard, which was silly of me. "Please take the spinach off my piece," Jordan said politely.



Our next-door neighbors joined us for the cake. They're moving in a couple weeks, which just kills us. Jordan and Connor are fast friends and what is better than having a best bud next door? I am so sorry that Jordan has to say goodbye to someone close to him again, after losing his beloved pal Jason when we moved here from Maryland. And this fall is sure to be rough, changing schools, starting kindergarten. I wish I could protect him from change.



Jordan opened presents on Thursday and wow, it's a Playmobil birthday. It's awesome stuff and Jordan loves it: now he has knights and a castle from Mommy and Daddy, pirates from Granty Jes and Aunt Deena, and a dragon from Aaron. He plays with all of these things for hours. They're well made and amazing springboards for the imagination. They are not really appropriate for Aaron, but Aaron isn't eating the pieces too much, and they work it out.



I tell you what, though, somebody should have warned me. I tried to just start putting the pirate ship together when he opened it, and our neighbor said "Um, you probably want to save that for later." No kidding. That ship took me a solid hour to assemble, concentrating fully and with no kids present. It was like assembling IKEA furniture but scaled down to toy size. It was way too fussy of a job for Jordan, and Aaron could not even have been in the room, there were so many little pieces. And the pirate ship was nothing compared to the castle. This two-story intricately constructed boy-type dollhouse, with hinged doors and shuttered windows and sliding gates and torches and flags and ladders leading to trap doors, took me a total of maybe three hours to put together, with sessions on two consecutive days. Here's the commercial picture of it.



Secret: I quite enjoyed putting it together, and the pirates too.

The next event was Jordan's birthday circle at school. It's a very nice ceremony, in which the birthday child walks around a candle to symbolize the earth's orbit around the sun, and with each orbit you say what the child achieved that year (learned to walk, etc.).



I brought pictures from each year, including this old favorite which charmed the socks off his teachers.



There was also more cake (the other layers of the lemon-blackberry). We were all getting quite ill from cake by that point.

Saturday there was a non-birthday interlude for the Fourth of July. (Jordan actually refers to that as Barack Obama's birthday, which is pretty funny, and the flag is Barack Obama's flag.) We spent the holiday over at Bekah and Bob's house, since they live in Wallingford, Seattle's fourth-0f-july hot spot. The kids ran a lemonade stand and made a killing. They were awfully cute, which got them a lot of tips. They reimbursed Bob for the lemonade and donated the rest to Paws.

That event involved yet more cake, since Suzie's birthday was July 1 and she sweetly asked me to make her a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I caught myself almost saying "Don't you want anything besides chocolate? Some raspberry filling, maybe, or vanilla frosting?" And then I remembered when I was her age and adults were always saying that to me and I thought "Boy, they just don't get it." So chocolate chocolate it was. It was very good.

And then finally we arrived at today, with Jordan's party at Matthews Beach. What a great thing is the public park. We just love this beach, with its little sandy strip and cold water and awesome view. We had brought a collection of pails and shovels for party favors, and our guests just scooped and dug and splashed the morning away.



Aaron in particular adores the sand, and wound up digging himself a little nest, which he could have stayed parked in all day. He was fairly offended to be dragged off for lunch, and dragged Grandma back to the beach as soon as she would go.



There were just five guests (Theo, Ava, Connor, and two school friends, Sam and Ori), plus assorted parents and siblings. After about an hour and a half of sand and water, people were ready to hydrate and eat. We had reserved a picnic table and brought sandwiches and salads and watermelon. And cupcakes... Jordan's request for this day was chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and rasbperries and blueberries on top. Very seasonal.



We just loved the whole thing. It was so fun and simple. We're ready to reserve the same table for next year. And nobody cried! which is really saying something, at kid birthdays.

Three cheers for five years of parenting, and our first of many birthday seasons in Seattle.