Wow. Five years.
Of course, it depends on the day, how I describe him, but our big boy Vaughn is brilliant, funny, passionate, articulate, dexterous (lego-wise), athletic, thoughtful, creative, sweet, and wonderful. Other days, of course, he is destructive, floppy, cranky, challenging, difficult, stubborn... but he amazes me every day. He is infinitely patient and loving with his baby sister. With his middle sister, he is a fierce competitor, co-conspirator, roommate, instigator, and gleeful irritant. Yet today, he insisted on making her a snack of his "recipe": a blueberry stuffed inside a raspberry. "Thank you," she said, unprompted. "You're welcome," he responded.
He draws dumptrucks and castles. We have a snowman made of foam and toothpicks on our desk at home. Also, it has fangs. He is musical, and changes the words of songs to make them silly. He takes pride in his clothes, and would wear a "handsome shirt" every day of the week, if he could. He received a necktie for Christmas, and wears it with everything: pj's, collared shirts, t-shirts... he's our little Alex P. Keaton. He got his first pair of shoelace shoes, and has been practicing his bunny ears.
Five years has flown by, but we're so glad to have met him.
On to the celebrations:
As much as I despise the word "epic", I think it's appropriate to use in this case. Vaughn was feted properly, thoroughly, and excessively, starting with the morning of his birthday, January 9th, which started with opening a few presents. Although Chris wasn't due to arrive by train till 7 pm, he made a brief appearance at breakfast. Can you see him in the photo?
Hello, future!
For school, instead of bringing cupcakes or something simple like that, he told me that he wanted gingerbread cookies. That looked like ninja turtles. Trust me, I put in the time trying to plant other ideas. Sugar cookies? No. Cupcakes? No. Chocolate chip cookies? No.
Sigh.
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| Confession: I knocked this one out of the park. |
That night, after school, we all went out to pick out an ice cream cake.
The girls approved. Tamsin demonstrated, quickly, repeatedly and insistently, that she could say, "more food, please" in sign language.
The next night (Friday), we went to Wild Wing (V's choice) to eat wings and a wee amount of crudités (for balance) for his Birthday Dinner. Cousins Logan and Jodie attended, as did the local gang of assorted grandparents and an uncle and an aunt.
Saturday was uneventful, in that there were no birthday celebrations, but Sunday picked up again, when we all went to (God help us) Cosmic Adventures for a few hours of running-jumping-chasing-playing, sugar, billions of overexcited children and ding-ding-ding-dingity-ding. We will never be able to give him a better birthday party, so we took (not enough) photos.
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| Entertainment! |
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| Cake! |
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| Friends! |
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