One of my best friends has politely pointed out that Bubba’s birthday is glaringly absent from this blog.  I forgot.  It’s very indicative of how his birthday went.  I didn’t forget the day or the shirt, but I just wasn’t as aware as usual and the day just went by with minimal fanfare.  My little boy turned six and it was just so-so.  Still, I tell you about it, cause the shirt was cute and the cake needs the opportunity to end up on “Cake Wrecks”.

So you know how we do birthdays around here – we make them about whatever the kiddo is crazin’ on at that moment.  Well, iPads are all the rage at the Blue Hutch and Bubba just loves to play Mayan Puzzle.  He has completed all 50 levels but still goes back to replay often and watch everything blow up.  I tell you this because, at some point, Bubba mentioned that he could have a Mayan Puzzle birthday and I took note.  I am sure that he said it off the cuff but it worked for me and with the unhappy truth that his birthday, this year, landed in one of our family’s busiest and most crazed weeks of the year.

So he had a Mayan Puzzle shirt (he can tell you how to solve it too):

 So, six squares makes for an easy puzzle (you just move the middle square to your right so that the matching fabrics line up) but he’s six and it works!   A real puzzle looks like this:

 and this is what I used as a pattern for making the cake.  Of course I got distracted while drawing the squares and mixed the colors up, so I am not sure the puzzle on the cake is solvable.

I know it’s pretty hideous, but it tasted good and held candles like it was supposed to:

We quickly opened presents:

and then Honey and I headed out to navigate two parent orientations at two different schools (we ended up attending the one at Promise together since we had done KDS before).  It’s fun that he got Connect4 and we have enjoyed playing together.  He also got a drum pad and a DVD on how to play the drums – should be fun.  The gifts I am really excited about are a subscription to God’s World News, the children’s resource by World Magazine, and a trip to the aquarium downtown where he’ll get to feed the fish (big and small) and have a back stage tour of how things work.  He’s going with his daddy an it should be just perfect for my two lovers of learning.

So there you go.  I forgot to give him his pack of gum (“We don’t chew gum till we’re six” is what you hear quoted around here) and I forget to give him a six year commitment which involves our reading of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe together.  It’ll be fine, I know, but messing up isn’t easy for this gal.

At least I have now posted about the birthday and I can mark that off with a smile 🙂 And he turned six. . . unfortunately there was nothing I could do to stop that.

On the nightstand – THAT’s where I found one of the slips of paper with notes of what I just couldn’t forget to type up so that one day I could tell the stories to my children and watch them blush.  Was it worth it? One item – kinda; one item – definitely; one item – eh.  I’ll let you guess which is which. . .

1.  My friend, Michelle, gave us a bunch of books when she recently cleaned out her house and moved.  Several of the books are from the Explore and Learn (affiliate link) series and I have been giving them to Bubba over time.  His favorite so far is on Earth and Space and he can quote all kinds of facts about the earth’s core and the planets, etc.

After the earthquake hit in Virginia/DC, I was telling Bubba what had happened and he proceeded to tell me how the earth had shifted and the movement caused walls to crack and blah, blah, blah – straight from the book.  I  told HIM that walls had cracked at the Pentagon and we Googled it so he could see pictures.

He was riveted.  He went and found his workbook on the 50 states, found DC, and drew a Pentagon in the approximate location of the real building. He asked what happened in the Pentagon and why the earth and shifted under it and caused walls to crack blah, blah, blah.  It was AWESOME to watch him learn.  FRIGHTENING, but awesome.

2.  The other day when we got home from preschool, I turned around to find KB standing in the driveway with  her baby doll and school bag in one hand and my Diet Dr. Pepper can in the other with two fingers out as she waved and hick-nodded to passing drivers (like these guys).  While looking for a photo to show you I learned that this is called a two finger farmer wave.  My three year old aced it.

3.  Bubba has to wear a patch over his left eye until October.  His right eye is the eye he had surgery on way back when and it is still weak, so we are hoping that the patch will force him to use it more and it will grow stronger.  He is NOT excited about the patch.

The two weeks before school were fine.  He only has to wear it two hours a day and we would knock that out first thing while he was watching cartoons, playing in his room, etc.  Then school started and he told me that he didn’t need to wear it there; people would laugh at him.  First of all, WHY is my Kindergartner even thinking about/aware of that?? I told him that if he wore the patch at home he wouldn’t have to wear it to school but if he wasn’t being faithful at home he would have to wear it in his classroom.  He  wasn’t faithful at home.

We had the conversation in the van about the fact that I didn’t believe kids would laugh at him.  If anything kids would say, “I wish I had a patch to wear like a pirate.”  He ended up jumping out of the van and tootling into school without a hesitation.  Now remember – he only had to wear it for a couple hours.

When I picked him up at 3:55PM he was STILL wearing the patch.  He ran over and grabbed my hand and I said, “You still have your patch on! Was it a good day?”  He answered (in complete monotone), “It was fine, mom.  I didn’t take my patch off.  And no one said, ‘I wish I had a patch to wear.'”  That was ALL he said.  Seriously.

Now you tell me – was it worth it?

I did NOT succumb to tears, but my eyes stung for most of the day.  It all started when we couldn’t find Little’s glasses, Bubba wasn’t dressed after being instructed eight times (at least) to get dressed, and while I was getting my own shoes on, everyone ran outside to swing on the swings after being told not to.

Then I remembered that Little had gone through her pack of 26 pull-ups in less than a week (because the school was letting her change them at her own discretion) and I still had to buy more and deliver them to her teacher.

I have to tell you, listening to my children sing almost made me calm again but then I heard the words and the sting returned.

“I’ve got a couple dents in my fender.  Got a couple rips in my jeans.  Try to fit the pieces together but perfection is my enemy. . . ”  (Francesca Battistelli, Free to Be Me)  Really? You think I need to hear that NOW? Thanks.

It just went on from there; nothing horrible but just “off” enough to keep me on edge and my eyes stinging.  So, tonight I blew off the grocery list that has been haunting me all day and did something to try and relieve the tension in my shoulders – I created.  And YOU get to benefit! That’s right.  I made this:

If you go here you should be able to download it for yourself and have it printed as an 8×10 at your local photo developer of choice.  If you don’t choose to download or print it, I don’t need to know.  I am just excited about picking mine up at Sam’s Club tomorrow at 11:05AM and getting it into my “change with the seasons” frame in the living room.

I might even have to buck tradition and pull out something  with pumpkins on it.

We’ll see how the morning goes.