Wednesday, October 18, 2006

"I is four- not 3 anymore."

Matthew is getting big. For months he has been telling us his birthdate, discussing how big he'll be, and what plans he has for his birthday. He also felt compelled to share this with complete strangers in stores and parks. A typical conversation went like this:

"Hi! I Matthew Browning Ellis. What your name? I three, but soon I'll be four. My birthday en October 9th. What your birthday? I'm getting bigger and taller."

Pretty friendly guy. I have to keep very close tabs on him! Most adults are charmed by this, and more than once he's scored a treat from a nice cashier or baker. Occasionally someone will ignore him, and he will ask, "Why he not say Hi? Matthew say Hi!" I've explained that sometimes people are busy, don't hear, or don't feel like talking. Course, Matthew always feels like talking!

Jonathan's birthday falls 4 days before Matthew's, and Matthew knows that first comes Daddy's birthday and then comes his. Consequently he has been looking forward to his father's birthday almost as much as his own. On the Jonathan's birthday we took a cake and some ice cream to his work. On the way there Matthew asked, "how old Daddy turning? 17?" Seventeen was the biggest number he could imagine- therefore Daddy must be seventeen. "No, Daddy is 30." "Oh. Wow!" Matthew was impressed.

Jonathan had his annual "guy" party with lots of pizza, StarCraft, and my dark chocolate cake drizzled with semi-sweet chocolate sauce. The kids napped (sort of) and I kept them mostly out of the way. I even got a game in myself. A good time was had by all.

The morning of Matthew's birthday he requested a spiderman cake. I guess he has more faith in my decorating skills than I do. I baked and frosted a round cake red. Then I pipped dark chocolate icing in a web design on the cake. It didn't look to shabby when I was through. Most importantly, he was pleased with the results.

Many of Matthew's buddies turned four in the past few months and he's been invited to numerous parties. As a consequence, he wanted a friend party. We decided we'd try a small party with 5 kids max. One of Matthew's friends had 17!- yes, 17 kids at his party. After prunning down his guest list considerably, we went ahead and wrote out the invitations. Matthew was very excited all week. He had three little boys and one girl at his party. It was a busy crew- but they were good and had a fun time. Suprisingly one of their favorite games was the button game (button, button , who has the button?). We subsituted a small eraser for the button and they wanted to play over and over. Another hit was "ghost, ghost, goblin" or duck, duck, goose. I learned that crafts and boys don't really mix at a party. I had these little foam finger puppets that you could make into a witch, ghost, bat, pumpkin, or cat. They were cute and not too difficult to make, but the boys quickly got bored and wanted to move on to more action oriented activities. So we did a lot of moving. I was ready for a nap by the time it was over...


-Rachel

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