Birthday celebrations got off to a somewhat rocky start as Aiden discovered the tricycle we were going to surprise him with parked behind the porch (nobody told Mommy it was there!). First Grandma and I tried to distract him and downplay his discovery, but we quickly had to shift to damage control and just try to keep the secret from Daddy....but Aiden came inside whining "bicycle! bicycle!" so we had to fess up to Daddy, and just go ahead and give the birthday boy his bike at 9:30 in the morning while Grandpa was busy cutting the lawn and everyone else was wearing various degrees of pajamas.
We had a Thomas the Train theme for the party and boy was that a hit. For those of you who aren't the parents of boys and may not have seen the Thomas videos, let me summarize: Thomas goes puff puff on a track while a soothing British voice narrates an extremely soporific 10 minute tale. In short: for adults, it's nearly impossible not to fall asleep watching them. But for some reason, little kids like Aiden can get pretty obsessed with Thomas. He went crazy over his Thomas cake, Thomas balloon, and especially the Thomas train track sent from Grandma & Grandpa Orr. Days later he is still occasionally and quite literally overwhelmed with gratitude. For instance last night, he chose to play with the train set for an extra 10 minutes instead of the usual bedtime bath (typically the bath is his favorite part of the bedtime routine). He patted the floor next to him and said "Pway, Mommy, right there". So I sat down and pulled Thomas around the track while making puffing noises, just like in the videos. He fell briefly silent, then made a big sigh and said "Fank you, Mommy". "Thank me for what, sweetie?" He looked up at my face, searching, eyes wide--how could I be so clueless?--"Thomas, train track, birthday, FANK YOU". So I guess, all in all, he had a pretty good birthday :)
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