32 + 1

Another thing that happened in August was my birthday. Yes, again, it was that time of the year :) Chris made me a cake with a thick layer of chocolate frosting. Yum!!! Being frugal-minded, I was firmly against buying new candles and went with whatever we had left over from other birthdays. That's how I ended up with the "32+1" candles instead of a proper "33".

Week 4 - Birthday

Posting late, but things piled up here. Ok, it's getting late and I still hope to get to bed before midnight at least once in two weeks, so I better get to the point.

Last week was M's birthday. He turned 4. Yippie!!! Babushka took a day off at work and we planned on having a very private birthday party on Wednesday evening, followed by a larger family party on Saturday. Except Grandma got sick first thing on Monday.

We still tried to have a bit of a private party on Wednesday - opening the gifts, playing with them, buying the cake, decorating it and ordering a giant pizza.

So, the gifts. First of all, M is not used to that many gifts. He usually gets 1 gift from us and whatever money he gets from all the grandparents, we just spend them on some kind of cool activities later on (kids museum, zoo, IMAX, etc). This time M got 3 gifts on his birthday and some more the next day. I think he got overwhelmed. Next year we'll try going back to 1 gift on his birthday. But here's what he got:

WALL-E - this was the most exciting gift of the day. M loves WALL-E and this little 'bot truly made his day. He took it with him everywhere and spent half the morning pushing it around the house collecting "trash" (bits of string and paper that I sprinkled liberally around the living room).

M later insisted on building a house for WALL-E so the little bot has some place to hide from the dust storms. And so we made one out of the big box WALL-E was shipped in. And then M made some "treasures" for WALL-E to collect, including a big necklace out of plastic beads.

Unit Blocks - not as exciting, but excellent edutoy. Plus it works on his muscle control skills. First thing he built was a gate and a castle which was later renamed into a planetarium.

Lego Duplo set - this is M's first Lego set and I hope not the last one. I hope to add a few more Duplo blocks to it in the future (once we're back in NC). I think adding more bricks would help retain his interest since this set is very specific and there are not enough spare bricks left over to build anything else around the construction site.

Tinkertoys - huge hit! Right away M built something that he called a rocket. Then - something else that he called a camera. He walked around the house with it stopping to take pictures. But the "camera" kept falling over. So he said: "This camera is not very high quality and it's not stable. But it takes very good pictures!"

Jedi Starfighter - M hasn't watched any of the Star Wars movies, but I got him a $0.50 copy of an Encyclopedia of Star Wars Vehicles (or some such title) at a local library sale and he is in love! His dream is to make Death Star, but I told him he has to get much better at Legos before we get him this kit. So he was beyond excited when one of his gifts turned out to be a model of Jedi Starfighter "just like one in the book, Mama!"

Then there was the cake. M wanted a cake that's "about Outer Space". And we planned on baking him one the day of his birthday. Except, of course, that Grandma got sick and I have no idea how to bake cakes (Chris is the baker, remember). Fortunately, a day or so before getting ill, Grandma and M made some gingerbread cookies for decorating the cake. So then I took M to a local bakery and he chose a cherri cheesecake 'cause it was red like Mars.

Then we decorated the gingerbread cookies. I decorated the astronauts, the rocket, the stars and the dog. And M decorated a round cookie and said it was our planet, Earth. Then we put it all together. So here's the deal - the cake was renamed into Moon. The rocket became Apollo 11 lunar module. The astronaut on the right is Neil Armstrong. The one on the left is Yuri Gagarin (yeah, I know, should've been Buzz Aldrin, but M was doing the naming and he wanted it to be Gagarin). The dog is Laika, the first animal in orbit. Stars - self-explanatory. They are all looking at our Earth. How cool was that!

The party on Saturday was cancelled, but Grandma felt well enough on Sunday to be left alone. So Grandpa, M and I went to a place called Peddler's Village in Lahaska, PA. It's a very pretty village, even in winter. But it's mostly boutiques and restaurants. However, they do have this awesome Giggleberry Fair that is totally worth the 2-hour drive (one way).

First, we went to an arcade. M's never been to one and had a ton of fun trying all the different games. Then he rode on a carousel lion. And then we went to the Giggleberry Mountain. I can't even begin to describe it. It's huge and awesome and so much fun. At first I only got M a ticket, but it looked so awesome that I ended up buying a ticket for myself as well. It's this huge multi-story maze with slides and rope ladders and tunnels and air cannons and a huge Giggleberry Fountain. Oh, and check it out, they have a 3-story tall spiral slide. I wanna go back again!

Maybe we'll get to go one more time before we go back to NC. It'd be great to go there with Chris though.

Trip to New York - Birthday Edition

We just got back from seeing my parents in NY. The big ocassion was, of course, my Dad's birthday. Some say spending 3 days on the road just to visit for a day and a half is a bit crazy. To them I say that Yuri Gagarin spent years preparing for his historic 108-minute space flight. Accidentally, my Dad's name is also Yuri.

Anyway, the drive there was uneventful since we took I-95. It went something like this - picking up speed... slowing down - state police... stopping to gas up and get some coffee... slowing down - traffic in DC... stopping - traffic between DC and Baltimore... picking up speed... slowing down - MD police... slowing down and stopping - the Maryland House (a foul-smelling rest stop) and on and on. Add to that the fact that M. was recovering from a cold and you get a pretty good picture.

The stay at my parents' house was, on the other hand, excellent (the key is to keep it short and sweet). We all celebrated Dad's birthday and, of course, M. got some presents (yeah, it's good to be the only grandchild). Except, of course, that Chris caught M's cold and was sneezing and sniffling and looking so pitiful and contagious, that we finally isolated him in the tiny bedroom (ok, both bedrooms in the house are tiny) and fed him yummy food and gave him brandy for medicinal purposes. Mom also made sure to force Chris to ingest countless cups of herbal tea, handfuls of homeopathic pills and rivers of beet juice (oh, and this later one had to be ingested through the nose - no kidding!).

Then we loaded up for the way back, this time not so much with food, but with tomato plants and herbs for our garden. We bid goodbye to my parents and drove straight to Rockland Bakery. Yeah, you know it's a major pilgrimage spot for Chris! As a matter of fact, I suspect a tasting tour and a shopping spree at this Bakery is one of the reasons he loves visiting my folks (the other one being all the wonderful Russian chocolate Mom stashes just for her favorite son-in-law).

For the way back we decided to ditch I-95 and take the good old I-81 instead. This meant a 2-day return trip with a stop-over somewhere in MD. Well, let me tell you - I take I-81 over the stupid I-95 any day, even if it would mean 3 days on the road. And honestly, I-81 is so super-awesome that it can easily take 3, 5 or even 7 days to get from NY to NC. The traffic is generally light compared to I-95 and there are so many things to see!

It doesn't go through any major cities, but instead goes by lots and lots of small towns. That's how we found Hagerstown, MD last year. Then there's also Winchester and Port Royal, both in VA and lots of others. And there are so many attractions along the way. I don't even count Hershey, PA or a Crayola factory. There's Antietam Battlefield, lots of historic George-Washington-been-here places, Luray Caverns, the Natural Bridge, etc, etc.

This time around we stopped at the Roadside America - the greatest miniature town, in the world! It is so awesome - all those miniature houses, cars, people, animals, a circus, a hot air balloon, a coal mine, an ice-cream parlor, a nostalgic-looking Main Street, and lots and lots of miniature trains running in circles through it all. And did I mention lots of buttons for the little kids (in all of us) to push to make things move?! Naturally, we spent a bit more time there than we intended to. But we still made it all the way to Winchester, VA.

The next day we went for a short drive through the Northern section of the Blue Ridge Parkway, from Port Royal to Thurnton Gap. Let me tell you, there are no tolls on I-81. But whatever you save in toll money, you end up spending on attractions. So we were very happy to find out that it was some kind of Take Your Family to a National Park week and we got to drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway for free (a $15 value). Hooray!

Then we went to the town of Staunton, VA to see a place called Frontier Culture Museum. I found out about when I leafed through the tourist brochures at The Maryland House (tip - second floor bathrooms are clean, smell ok, have family restrooms, and are largely unused because the elevator's always broken and noone wants to use the stairs). Ok, back to this museum - it's AWESOME! We spent close to 2 hours there and loved every minute of it! M simply refused to leave. He thought we would stay there for at least a few days, if not move in outright. After all, there were lambs to pet, piglets to feed, chickens to chase, sticks to pick off the ground and make into pretend rifles, and a big red wagon! Oh, and the smith made a nail and there was a cat sleeping by the warm fireplace in the Irish house and a loom to explore and a well with puddles of water all around it and... well, you get the picture, right?

Officially 3T

A bit belated... The whole birthday thing turned out very different from the original plan. For starters, M was going through some kind of funk the week before his birthday - lots of crying, "no-no-no"s, "I won't do it"s and such. He kept saying that he didn't want a birthday and whatever comes with it - balloons, guests, gifts, even a cake!

Then there was the issue of choosing a theme. For the last month or two I thought it'd be a Word World-themed party. After all, M's been crazy about Word World and, in particular, Chef Pig for the whole last year. Well, a week or so before his birthday, as if on cue, he stopped talking about WW, didn't want to play Chef Pig games and didn't even care to watch WW cartoons! (He did the same thing last year with the whole Thomas the Train obsession - dropped it a few days before his birthday party AFTER we bought a very expensive train cake form at William-Sonoma.)

Finally, it snowed here the weekend before his birthday. Why is it relevant? Because a few of his little friends' birthday parties got cancelled due to snow and rescheduled for the following weekend. And the other couple of kids played in snow way too much and came down with cold.

And so, there we were... So we decided to have a small birthday dinner the day of M's birthday (which fell on a Tuesday this year). We didn't send official invites, but instead called and told people to "stop by between 5pm and 7pm for some cake". And M's grandparents drove into town on Monday evening.

The day of M's birthday it rained very hard all day. And that, combined with the fact that a couple of friends were still sick, meant that noone "stopped by between 5pm and 7pm". Which was just fine.

The night before M's birthday Chris went to the store and bought a ton of balloons and put them into M's room while the little one was asleep. Imagine a 3-year old waking up and seeing a big bunch of balloons next to his bed! Can't go wrong on this one.

The day was spent playing with grandparents. And then, in the evening, M got to open a few gifts and eat a yummy cake which he helped to make and decorate. And he absolutely loved the whole thing!

(I actually really liked the low-key, low-stress and low-budget birthday production. Consider this - all the truly important elements were there: family, gifts, cake, candles, birthday song, balloons yet nobody got exhausted, fought over toys or threw fits and there was practically no cleanup afterwards. )