Daily Adventures

Yesterday was John's Birthday. We woke up to 4 inches of snow, too! All over the roads, grass, trees. It was beautiful!

We had the traditional baked pancakes for breakfast (aka Dutch Babies) and then the boys all went out to go sledding for the morning, and came back demanding hot chocolate.

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I am grateful for my birthday presents and for a really cool kid.

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I had a very happy birthday.

Quiet for the whole morning, which was really good after the really busy weekend.

I woke up in time to help John get Jet to the bus stop. Jet happily insisted that I open all my packages and they were *all* books from Kathy, my sister. Woo. I have had three promises of things to come. And Jet made me a small book, too. He loved giving that to me. And we walked, hand in hand to the bus.

Then John went off to the OUR Center to do the day shelter work he does. So I got a very nice morning to myself. I started by making a one egg batch of incandescens's British pancakes, she'd pointed me at a recipe that I haul out when I want to treat myself. Better yet, I had a small tube of chestnut cream to put on them. Much happiness in that.

After I did the dishes, I went into the basement with the second DVD from the Fruits Basket collection that amberley had loaned me and I watched that while I rode the bike for a good forty minutes. After that I showered and devoured Rose Daughter, which Kathy had given me. It was a good read.

I made potstickers for myself for lunch, and then John came home and ate lunch as well. We had a very quiet afternoon, while I watched more anime and knitted. When Jet came home we did what we've been doing for the last few weeks and went down into the basement to play Okami. That was fun.

The boys asked me to pick dinner, and we went to the Outback near our house. I had a bad craving for lambchops and their blue cheese chopped salad. So we had those. We then zoomed back home, and I picked up my worship board meeting stuff and ran off to the meeting. There the chair of the board presented me with an apple-raspberry pie and a couple of candles about halfway into the meeting! Hee. She also had slices of cheddar to go with the pie and I happily partook. The meeting lasted until after 9... sigh, so it was kind of long, but it was good.

Then I went home and got to have a good phone call with my sister. John and I did a few things and then he presented me with a slice of my favorite zucchini chocolate cake with a candle stuck in it! Hee. Happy Birthday to me...

I ended up pretty tired, but quite happy. :-)

David turned out a beautiful, huge spread of waffles, fruit, and toppings on Saturday morning. It was absolutely wonderful, and Jet even ate fresh strawberries with his waffles. He wanted to play more Stratego, but when we said that we were going to MindPort, he hopped up and got dressed and ran for the car. He got to sit with me for the trip down and sat with George for the trip back to the house.

MindPort is filled with hands-on experiments with lots of science based items. There's lots of fun things including a huge stream model in the very front with lots of rocks to make dams and wooden bits to float down the flow. Jet could probably have just stayed there the whole time. There were lots of other things, too, and he spent a good amount of time at each, studying, trying things out and then experimenting with how else they could work. There was one thing that had been at both children's museums and this one, which was a bunch of air tubes, where you could dial the tube set you wanted, and then stuff a ball into the flow and it would go along those tubes. He was tired of it by now, but he still gave it a spin for each of the tubes.

He liked a marble stepper, that was hand-cranked, and had two steps that would make the marbles go to the top.

I loved a rubber tub that had two racks holding water level sensors that each played a different note. The higher the water level the louder the note, and there were several styles of "music" that could be gotten from the various sensors. The wave action gave it a base rhythm, and I could change which tones has which frequencies by their position in the tub. It was very fun, and the curator was grateful that someone with some sense of music was experimenting with it rather than just creating something random. *grin*

Eventually, we had to go back, and we had a big soup and bread lunch with presents! And cake! And ice cream! Hee. Jet's fourth or fifth birthday party and he enjoyed it immensely. Mary's gifts of a bubble building set and a copy of the Velveteen Rabbit was very happily recieved and Jet started building with them as soon as he got them. We played with soap consistencies until he got something he thought was cool and we ran out of time. Isabel's cake was served quite happily with fresh strawberries and plenty of vanilla ice cream, and then Emily and her guy left for work and Isabel and George left to visit a friend before heading home.

Luckily, they also took along with them all the stuff we didn't need for tonight, as we were taking the train back to Seattle tomorrow morning.

That evening, we got to play more Stratego, and Jet got even better at it. He decimated Mary's rank and file and only a very swift strike by David after dinner won the game for her. Dinner was the leftovers from last night and spaghetti and sauce. It was good with a very varied salad, a bit of bread, and plenty of fizzy water.

Jet then graciously said it would be okay for David to put him to bed, and John and I went to the Co-op and each had a slice of "The Perfect Slice of Chocolate Cake", and it was quite good with a mug of hot coffee. The cafe had already closed, so when I got my mug of decaf I had to reheat the coffee to hot, but it was good enough. A nice, quiet dessert together and some time to talk and think about the houses and what we'd seen.

This time I got all my drugs in well early enough that I could just sleep when my head hit the pillows.

Woo. It's my first day off and I don't feel Aaaaany different. Hm...

Jet says that being six doesn't really feel all that different from being five. So maybe that's related? I'm not sure. *grin*

But he is six and I'm off and I guess that's just reality, now, and I got up this morning and thought to myself, I don't have to go into work today. Mmm...

The weekend felt like any other weekend, only MORE busy, with all of Jet's birthday things. He now says that he has six days of birthday, so he's pretty happy.

( The Six Days of Jet's Birthday, minus One. )

Finally got the compter rebuilt and am getting things back on it. The registry failed, and then chunks of the OS. So John stripped it down and replaced just the OS, so that we could get all the data off, and then he reimaged the whole thing. We pretty much kept the original image on one partition, so that it would be easy if we needed to.

And it's been easy enough. It's also been kind of nice to start with a clean software slate, and just put on the software and tools that we're actually using anymore. That's been very cool.

( Cut for length alone. )

The Party went well. We Had A Cunning Plan, with knowledge about how our five-year-old worked, and it worked quite well indeed.

The plan was and went as follows:

1. The kids start to trickle in, and as they come in, we set before them a HUGE PILE of construction paper, safety scissors, and crayons and pens. We tell them we want them to make things that are in the sea.
2. The kids make fish, mostly. Then jellies. Then octopi, and then an Old Boot, a tire, plenty of shells and rocks...
3. We start to put paper clips on all the fish.
4. Some of the kids start to get bored, so John brings out the two fishing poles. And then everyone rumbles upstairs to the well-railed balcony and they take turns, two at a time, fishing from the second floor to the "sea floor" on the first floor.
5. We discover that it is very, very good only having two poles. Two are much easier to untangle than any larger number
6. For a good half hour, all the kids are very intent on Their Place In Line
7. After more than half decide it's not worth waiting any more, we get out the Cake and Ice Cream.
8. Much fun is had by all and especially Jet as we sing the traditional songs, serve the traditional sugars, and eat and drink until everyone buzzes.
9. I hand the biggest kid a balloon and all the kids come by to see as I tell him to pop it. BANG! A picture flies out of the broken balloon. All the kids crowd around as I explain that they need to go to the spot in the picture and find a balloon, which will link to another and another and...
10. The house rumbles with the racing of many feet. It's a herd of children!! It's really cool seeing them all run like mad and after looking in five different places, with a few reminders of "Look at the picture!!" there's finally another BANG!
11. And the race is repeated and repeated and by the seventh balloon, no one is buzzing any more.
12. They find a pile of balsa airplanes (Jetgliders. Jet loves that his name is on every plane.) and are steady enough to put them gently together, and we all go down to the basement and start flying them.
13. The first of the parents come to pick up their child.
14. It is a successful party.

Hoorah!!

So it was a very good day, and Jet nearly fell asleep in my arms at dinner, but managed to stay up until 8. He went to bed without any fuss and then wasn't up until nearly 7:30 the next morning. We're starting to think that an 8 pm bedtime would be good for him.

His annual check up was on Monday. He is still right on track for his birth percentiles, so the doctor was pleased. She expected that he was still picky, but told us that this is the age when it's likely to loosen up, and given that he's taking some pride in trying new things, I can see what she meant.

He had three immunizations. The nurse had me hold him and keep some control of his arms, but when she stuck him with the needles, he shook a little, but didn't move at all. Later he told me that my putting my hands on his really helped him a lot. Which made me ache a little inside, as the nurse had wanted me to do that to make sure he had no choice about moving; but I'm glad he had the take on it that he had. As it was, he did great, and didn't protest at all, and did mention that it hurt. We said, yes, it hurts, but it should go away soon and you tell us if it doesn't get better. He promised. I think it also helped that the nurse told him that it was going to pinch, feel weird, and when it stopped. He knew what was happening.

I remember when I used to get allergy shots as a kid, and I hated people telling me "oh... it doesn't hurt!" when, damnit, it does. It was especially ironic after a really bad reaction once when I had to do the adrenaline thing. At least my regular nurse, then didn't patronize me.

The doc says we don't have to get another checkup for another two years, the immunization sheet will get him into kindergarten, and we're pretty much set for a while. Makes me mildly thoughtful about the fact that in two years we may well not be here anymore.

Jet is SOooooo excited about his upcoming birthday.  At dinner tonight, his eyes got all big as he said, "My birthday is in TWO days!  And my party is in four days!"  Hee. It's fun that he can actually count the days now, and he took a while to work out that his birthday was Thursday and his party was Saturday...

He and John picked Zebra cakes for the treat to bring to Game School on Thursday.  The school asks us to take in commercial snacks so that they can vet the ingredients for allergens, which makes all kinds of sense.  The big sack is just sitting on the washing machine cover and Jet grins every time he walks by them and touches the boxes with a reverent hand.  The boys also ordered a 1/4 sheet cake for the party, giving the bakery plenty of notice.

We went for ice cream tonight, at the White Mountain Creamery.  They're doing pretty well, from the looks of it, and we all enjoyed our ice creams and talked about Jet's party and what we were going to do...  Jet really wants to make paper fish to do Go Fish from the backs of couches, and other cool games for the kids.  Mom gave me a little Betty Crocker book on how to do birthday parties from back in the 60's.  What's really cool is that most of the games and things still work today.  What excites little kids hasn't changed all that much.

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

Ha. Bujold in the quotes collection. Does give one hope.

( Spent the weekend quietly and quickly. )